you won't believe this

Fri Feb 29 18:56:06 UTC 2008

In general I agree with Kathy and the others who view the LENA business with appalled alarm, although I have no good ideas for how to respond to it.

On the otherhand, after reading about the infant reading tapes Peter Gordon referred to, and the letters from parents who have used the tapes, I have some of the same questions Peter does.  In what sense is it not reading?  Mothers attest that their 9 month olds learn both to speak and to read simultaneously.  What is going on?  The animal experiments do suggest that some kind of conditioning may be in progress, but the testimonials from mothers claim that infants are using and reading these words freely out of context of the game.  If some of the claims are real we ought to know about it, even at the cost of undermining long held assumptions about the nature of cognitive and language development.  (Of course we should also be skeptical of any testimonials attached to a commercial product.)

Katherine Nelson
Distinguished Professor Emerita
Ph.D. Program in Psychology
City University of New York Graduate Center

________________________________

From: info-childes at googlegroups.com on behalf of Gordon, Peter
Sent: Fri 2/29/2008 10:52 AM
To: info-childes at googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: you won't believe this

I'm sure you can train an animal to do tricks like this -- one of my old professors used to train pigeons on standard Skinner boxes with 2 levers, and put "PECK" on the positive side and "DON'T PECK" on the negative side!  But to do a trick like this (touching various body parts in response to a written cue) would probably involve pretty intensive conditioning with gradual shaping and lots of food treats for rewards as the animal gradually approaches the desired behavior.  This kind of conditioning would probably be impractical to do with a 9 month old.  So, it would be interesting to see what kind of training is done in this program, what the rewards are and how long it takes them to associate the word with the body part or action.  I guess it would be interesting to see if this generalized to seeing someone else touching their body parts or if they could do it to a doll.   In any case, it might be interesting to see how it's done.

Peter Gordon, Associate Professor
525 W 120th St. Box 180
Biobehavioral Sciences Department
Teachers College, Columbia University
New York, NY 10027
Office Phone: (212) 678-8162
FAX: (212) 678-8233
Web Page: www.tc.edu/faculty/index.htm?facid=pg328

________________________________

From: info-childes at googlegroups.com on behalf of Nan Ratner
Sent: Fri 2/29/2008 10:02 AM
To: info-childes at googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: you won't believe this

It is interesting, although in an elementary school science fair my kids
participated in, one student taught his dog (a retriever, not even a
border collie :-)) very similar skills/tricks (and was careful with the
help of his neuroscientist parent to point out this isn't really
"reading") , so I am not all that surprised an infant can do it with
enough experience/training. It is of course also  interesting to
speculate on what parents believe they are accomplishing with this sort
of stuff.

Nan

Nan Bernstein Ratner, Professor and Chairman
Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences
0100 Lefrak Hall
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
nratner at hesp.umd.edu
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/hesp/facultyStaff/ratnern.htm
301-405-4213
301-314-2023 (fax)

>>> "Gordon, Peter" <pgordon at exchange.tc.columbia.edu> 2/29/2008 9:49
AM >>>
Has anyone looked at this "Infant Reading" website?  Apparently this
was shown on Channel 4 in the UK yesterday.  It shows a 9 month old
being shown words on a card labeling body parts, and then responding by
pointing to the appropriate part:

http://www.infantlearning.com/

Obviously the baby isn't really reading, but it does seem to be
responding to the shape of the words and touching the appropriate body
part (head, teeth, feet etc.)  I don't see any other obvious cuing going
on.  If true, it does seem remarkable that the infant can actually
encode differences between the words and use them as cues for touching
body parts.  I guess then the question is whether this is symbolic, and
if not, then why not.

Peter
Peter Gordon, Associate Professor
525 W 120th St. Box 180
Biobehavioral Sciences Department
Teachers College, Columbia University
New York, NY 10027
Office Phone: (212) 678-8162
FAX: (212) 678-8233
Web Page: www.tc.edu/faculty/index.htm?facid=pg328

________________________________

From: info-childes at googlegroups.com on behalf of Krisztina Zajdó
Sent: Thu 2/28/2008 8:09 PM
To: info-childes at googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: you won't believe this

Dear Colleagues,

I believe a response is desperately needed here from the research
community - especially because of ethical issues involved.
Here is how the LENA website advertises the product:

Parents that have been desperately searching for answers
and a way to measure and improve their child's language
development now have LENA.

If you are DESPERATELY searching for answers because you feel something
is wrong with your child's communicative development, consulting with a
linguist, speech pathologist or a child development specialist is in
order, not buying LENA for $399. That approach needs to be the priority
for the DESPERATE parent, not purchasing a product that in itself will
not help.

Further, it is stunning that there is a not a word mentioned on the
LENA website about how the quality (rather than quantity) of
interactions and speech impacts linguistic/intellectual growth.

One of the parent testimonials cited was a real surprise.

"Getting to see the results of how much I interact with my child
shows me how many times during the day I am just not cutting it.
Awareness of these problems will help us improve greatly."

I am all for awareness, but spreading the belief that parents can use
the LENA system to identify when and how they are just not cutting it
when it comes to supporting their child's linguistic development is
clearly disturbing.

Isabelle, please let me know how I can help.

Krisztina

------------------------------------
Krisztina Zajdó, M.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Linguist, Speech scientist
Assistant Professor of Speech-Language Pathology

Director of the Child Speech/Phonology Lab

University of Wyoming
Division of Communication Disorders
Dept. 3311
1000 E. University Avenue
Laramie, WY 82071

Ph: 307-766-6405
F: 307-766-6829

zajdo at hotmail.com
------------------------------------

________________________________

        From: khirshpa at temple.edu
        Subject: Re: you won't believe this
        Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:50:25 -0500
        To: info-childes at googlegroups.com

        Great to hear from you!  Are you up for drafting a response?  I
am a bit crazed for the next couple of days and then I leave for Utah
and San Francisco.  Whew. What have you been up to? Kathy

        On Feb 28, 2008, at 11:31 AM, isa barriere wrote:

                Dear Kathy,
                Thanks for sharing this with all of us.

                As the Director of Research in a pre-school center that
serves a very large number (> 2,000)of children from low SES (and many
different langauge backgrounds) and that incoporates a clinic (EI 0 to 3
and special ed 3 to 21 - 3,000) in which I regularly contribute to
parent'sworkshops and staff profesisonal development, I think it is
essential that we write a response pointing out the many many factors
that we know/don't know bout that may impact timing of language
developmental stages.  I also suggest that we should try to do so in
collboration perhaps with representatives of relevant service providers
(such as professional SLP organization ASHA etc).

                Let me know how I or other members of the organizations
I work for and other colleagues can help.

                I look forwrad to hearing from you and to other people's
reactions.

                isabelle Barriere, PhD
                Director of Policy for Research & Education
                Yeled v'Yalda Early Childhood cneter (www.yeled.org
<http://www.yeled.org/> )
                & Co-Director, YVY Research Insititute
(http://www.yeled.org/res.asp)
                & Research Associate, Research Institute for the Study
of Language in Urban Society (RISLUS), CUNY Graduate center.

                On 2/28/08, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek <khirshpa at temple.edu>
wrote:

                        I just read the article in the NYTimes on baby
techtronics part of which described the Lena system.  Yes, Lena is in
the news again.  The adds from their web site tell us that it is
relevant to any parent concerned about "language delays, autism or
transitioning an adopted child!"  I am copying the description from the
Times and thought we might all want to check out how our research is
interpreted in the marketplace. Does this require a response from our
community?  What is our professional responsibility when this keeps
coming up in the news?

                        Kathy

                        Last on our list was the LENA System ($399) a
language measurement tool developed by Infoture, in Boulder, Colo. The
system is based on research demonstrating a correlation between the
amount parents talk to their babies during their first three years and
their professional success later in life.

                        The LENA System includes a credit card device
and several children's outfits designed with large pockets in the front.
Several days a month, you slip the device into the clothing and it
records conversation between parent and child.

                        At the end of the day, you plug it into your
personal computer. Special software (available for Windows, but not
Macs) analyzes the speech - separating adult words and baby gurgling
from other noises - and reports on how many words you have spoken to
your baby, how often your baby responds, and where you match up against
the rest of the American population, to ensure your infant is getting
that all-important verbal edge on other infants.

                        My girls are a bit too young for the LENA, which
Infoture recommends for infants from 2 months to 4 years. Instead I
called Jennifer Jacobs, a mother of two from Boise, Idaho, who used the
device to ensure her youngest child, Katherine, was not getting left
behind.

                        http://www.lenababy.com <http://www.lenababy.com/> 
<http://www.lenababy.com/> /

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