An Investigation of Language Environment Analysis Measures for Spanish–English Bilingual Preschoolers From Migrant Low-Socioeconomic-Status Backgrounds

Purpose

The current study was designed to (a) describe average hourly Language Environment Analysis (LENA) data for preschool-age Spanish–English bilinguals (SEBs) and typically developing monolingual peers and (b) compare LENA data with mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) and total number of words (TNW) calculated on a selected sample of consecutive excerpts of audio files (CEAFs).

Method

Investigators examined average hourly child vocalizations from daylong LENA samples for 42 SEBs and 39 monolingual English-speaking preschoolers. The relationship between average hourly child vocalizations, conversational turns, and adult words from the daylong samples and MLUw from a 50-utterance CEAF was examined and compared between groups.

Results

MLUw, TNW, average hourly child vocalizations, and conversational turns were lower for young SEBs than monolingual English-speaking peers. Average hourly child vocalizations were not strongly related to MLUw performance for monolingual or SEB participants (r = .29, r = .25, respectively). In a similar manner, average hourly conversational turns were not strongly related to MLUw for either group (r = .22, r = .21, respectively).

Conclusions

Young SEBs from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds showed lower average performance on LENA measures, MLUw, and TNW than monolingual English-speaking peers. MLUw from monolinguals were also lower than typical expectations when derived from CEAFs. LENA technology may be a promising tool for communication sampling with SEBs; however, more research is needed to establish norms for interpreting MLUw and TNW from selected CEAF samples.

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