Measurement of Children’s Language Environments Using Automated Measurement Technology in Rural Lesotho: Findings From a Sample of Children and Their Caregivers in a Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial

The quality of the home language environment and communicative interactions between caregivers and children are crucial components of child language development. We used the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) technology to assess children's language environments (adult word count, conversational turns, and child vocalizations) among a sample of children and their caregivers in rural Lesotho. We assessed whether a parenting intervention led to improvements in children's language environments. LENA data were collected from a randomly selected subsample of children enrolled in a cluster-randomized controlled trial. Language environment data were collected at the 12-month follow-up from 607 children (50.4% female; 28-81 months of age) and their caregivers using two different methodological approaches. For the 299 children (157 intervention; 142 control) in Sample 1 who wore the LENA device at home over 2 days, children's home language environments did not differ significantly by intervention and control conditions. For the 308 children (152 intervention; 156 control) in Sample 2 who wore the LENA device during a brief video-recorded caregiver-child interaction task, adult word count (0.4 SD; CI [0.026, -0.76]), conversational turns (0.31 SD; CI [0.03, 0.59]), and child vocalization count (0.36 SD; CI [0.03, 0.68]) were significantly higher during the interaction task in the intervention arm compared to the control arm. Interactions in the intervention arm were also characterized by significantly less silence. Our study demonstrates that despite the challenges it presents, measuring children's development in majority world settings remains an important priority, and that consideration of the local context should be prioritized within this research agenda. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).