Questions about LENA

LENA stands for ‘Language ENvironment Analysis’ and is a small recorder that during a full day records sound. This gives us a good image of the language input of the child on an average day. The LENA is worn by the child, in a shirt especially made for this.

• To use LENA, you first press the ‘POWER’ button and keep this pressed for a few seconds.
• Next, keep the ‘RECORD’ button pressed for a few seconds.
• Place the LENA in the shirt.
• Let your child wear the shirt and leave it all day.

On the day of recording it is important that the LENA is on the entire day.

• Turn the LENA on as soon as the child wakes up.
• Leave the LENA on the entire day, it will turn off by itself.
• During showers or naps, do not turn of the LENA, instead take off the shirt and place it nearby.

LENA is the most important part of this study. LENA is used to see how children and parents use their languages in their daily lives. To get a clear image of this we need a recording of a full day.

LENA is harmless and child friendly. Is has been designed to be worn by children from a very young age and children experience no discomfort by it. The recorder does not transmit anything, it only records.

The best day to use LENA is a day at which the child does not attend school or nursery. In order to make recordings of other children, we also need the permission of their parents. Generally, the best day is a weekend day.

For the quality of the recording, it is important that the child wears the LENA in the dedicated t-shirt.

• Place the LENA in the t-shirt before putting it on your child, this way the child will get less distracted by the recorder.
• If the child does not like the t-shirt, you can place a sticker on it or wear a different shirt underneath it. We prefer if you do not wear different clothing on top of it.
• Should this not work, perhaps try to use LENA a different day. Wearing the shirt cannot be replaced by manually taking the LENA and placing it nearby the child. This does not work well and does not provide us with a good recording.

Your child may put a jacket or coat over the LENA shirt when going outside. We ask you not to wear the LENA shirt under a jumper or different shirt all day, this may leave the recording more difficult to hear due to the friction between the fabrics. A LENA shirt can be worn on top of a jumper. The researcher will bring multiple LENA shirts so one should always fit.

It is possible that something happens on the day of recording that you prefer for no one else to hear. In this case, you may write down the times of this and pass this on to the researchers. The researchers will then make sure that this moment is removed from the recording before anyone can listen to it. We ask you not to turn the LENA off and on.

It is best to not turn LENA off, because this makes our analyses of the recordings more difficult. Should anything happen on the day of recording, and you would like us to remove a section of the recording; write down the times. We can remove this. The recordings between those times will never be able to be listened to by anyone.

It is important to know that this a voluntary study and stopping is always allowed. You are always allowed to turn off LENA because you would like to quit or in case of emergency.

We use the recording to see how many different languages are spoken inside the house. We listen to which languages are spoken at home and the way in which different languages are mixed with one another. Our study is not about what is said in the recording. For more information on how we keep our files and recording, here  you can read more on privacy and data storage.

For more information about this study and LENA, you can always contact us. You can do this via this form, by emailing us at calm@uu.nl or by giving us a call on 06 28 83 44 30.