LENA

[Kim Oller]

Dear Nan and others interested in LENA,
I'm on the scientific advisory board for Infoture, which produces
LENA. The system locates utterances of child and adult, but does not
identify words or phonetic elements - I am using LENA to help with
transcription because it helps me find utterances fast - but the
transcription itself still has to be done by a human. The big
advantage of LENA is that the parent can conduct recording
naturalistically in the home with substantial convenience for as much
as 16 hours, (the recorder is battery powered) and then you have a
huge sample of child and adult utterances to work with, all recorded
outside the laboratory. I am currently working on just 8 days of
recording with my daughter Lia, most of which were in the ten-hour
range. Recording quality is quite good, as long as you don't have the
TV or stereo on too close to the child - the software does a pretty
good job of recognizing the TV and stereo, though, so the processed
data is still quite useful.

We are hoping that in the not too distant future, the LENA system will
also yield a first level (approximate) transcription of child
utterances, and first level identification of words for both child and
adult.

Just one more point on the LENA software; we are beta testing it for
Infoture right now, and a key feature is the export of LENA labeled
files (indicating both child and adult utterances) to .cha files for
use with CLAN software. I'll be able to give a reading on how it works
soon, and if there are improvements needed, we'll let them know.
Hopefully it will be in good shape not long from now, and I expect it
to be a great help in transcription.
Best wishes,
Kim


On Feb 8, 9:04 am, "Nan Ratner" <nrat... at hesp.umd.edu> wrote:
> At a conference a short while ago, I received a brochure regarding a program for child language recording and transcription called LENA. It supposedly automates a large portion of transcription for child language; has anyone on the list seen this program in operation, and how well does it appear to work?
>
> best regards to all,
>
> Nan Ratner
>
> Nan Bernstein Ratner, Professor and Chairman
> Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences
> 0100 Lefrak Hall
> University of Maryland
> College Park, MD 20742
> nrat... at hesp.umd.eduhttp://www.bsos.umd.edu/hesp/facultyStaff/ratnern.htm
> 301-405-4213
> 301-314-2023 (fax)
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