Interview with Jill Gilkerson, Ph.D., Language Research Director, LENA Foundation
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Linda Schreiber:Good day Jill. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed about your work and the LENA Developmental Snapshot. Jill, take a moment to tell our readers about your background and your role with the LENA Foundation, the publisher of the Developmental Snapshot.Jill:I am a linguist speciali
Linda Schreiber:Good day Jill. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed about your work and the LENA Developmental Snapshot. Jill, take a moment to tell our readers about your background and your role with the LENA Foundation, the publisher of the Developmental Snapshot.
Jill:I am a linguist specializing in early language acquisition. I received my doctorate in linguistics from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), and have been the Director of Child Language Research at LENA Foundation for more than four years. At the Foundation, I am responsible for collecting and analyzing the data in our Natural Language Corpus and for overseeing our research efforts.
Linda:So you were involved in LENA's Natural Language Study as the researcher. What, then, is the LENA Developmental Snapshot?
Jill:The LENA Developmental Snapshot is a 52-item parent report questionnaire focusing on early language skills. It is designed to be completed by parents of children between 2 months to 36 months of age. The questionnaire can be completed within the LENA software or online. After the responses are submitted, the questionnaire is automatically scored, producing a development age and standard score estimates with respect to total language (receptive and expressive) language skills.
Linda:You designed this tool for parents but might others find it useful?
Jill:The tool can be used by parents, clinicians, or researchers. Parents can get an overall picture of their child's language skills and track their child's progress over time. Clinicians can use the Snapshot to quickly obtain overview information on language skills as a screening tool or as a supplement to a comprehensive evaluation. Researchers find it valuable as a tool for grouping research participants with respect to language skills.
Linda:You use the term snapshot in the title. How does this term fit with what you have created?
Jill:We chose the term snapshot because it provides a quick picture of the child's overall language skills.
Linda:I think our readers can relate to the need for a "snapshot." How did you go about creating this snapshot tool?
Jill:My research staff, which includes linguists, SLPs, statistics experts, and research assistants created the Snapshot. We reviewed about 10 widely used assessments and parent questionnaires, noting the questions that were common among these instruments. We arranged the most common questions with respect to developmental age, and piloted several versions among different populations. A statistical item analyses helped us determine which questions were most indicative of developmental age as well as the optimum ordering of items. The final questionnaire was sent to parents of over 300 children in the Denver-metro area for norming purposes.
Linda:So LENA Developmental Snapshot is research based. How well does it align with other developmental profiling systems or standardized instruments?
Jill:Yes, the Snapshot is research based. It was created based on qualitative analysis of widely used questionnaires and assessments that research has shown to be valid and reliable. The final metric was developed based on widely used, research-based principles for assessment development and norming. We tested the accuracy of the Snapshot compared to the Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Test (REEL-3) and the Preschool Language Scale-4 (PLS-4), as well as the Communicative Development Inventory, and the Cognitive Adaptive Test/Clinical Linguistic and Auditory Milestone Scale (CAT/CLAMS). Our results indicated overall average correlations around .93, which suggests that the Snapshot scores are in agreement with the scores from these other assessments and questionnaires.
Linda:What are the key features of the LENA Developmental Snapshot?
Jill:The key features of the snapshot are the automatic scoring and the convenient output reports, which provide development ages and standard scores. Reports are presented in a way that is easy to explain to parents and also allows for tracking visually across time.
Linda:How might professionals, parents, and teachers benefit from using the LENA Developmental Snapshot?
Jill:The Snapshot can be beneficial to parents and professionals both in terms of screening for language delay and in tracking progress over time. The automatic scoring and quick completion time (6-10 minutes depending on age) make it unique compared to other questionnaires.
Linda:How do professionals or parents access this tool? Is there any specific hardware or software they will need?
Jill:The Snapshot is available within the LENA Home and LENA Pro Systems. It can also be accessed by parents at www.lenababy.com and by professionals at www.lenafoundation.org. Parents or clinicians can create an account that will store results confidentially and allow for progress monitoring over time.
Linda:And is there a cost to accessing the LENA Developmental Snapshot?
Jill:The cost of using the Snapshotthe automatic scoring, data storage, and data retrievalis $9.95 per use.
Linda:That's quite inexpensive for the value it provides! Jill, this is an interesting and valuable tool. We will do our best to let parents and SLPs know it exists. I think our readers will find this developmental assessment tool quite beneficial. Thanks for chatting with me about it today.