Thirty Million Words Project: A Feasibility Trial

The investigators propose to administer the TMW intervention to a small group of parents from low SES backgrounds in the Chicago area, assessing outcomes for caregivers at specific time intervals after administration. An audio environment recording device, the Language ENvironment Analysis recorder (LENA), will be used to gather information about the child's home language environment. The treatment group will receive feedback from some of these home audio recordings to motivate behavior change. A comparison between measurements from baseline recordings (without linguistic feedback given) and recordings during the intervention program (with linguistic feedback given) will be used to evaluate changes in caregiver linguistic behavior. In addition to the report information, parents will also be provided with strategies for enriching the child's language environment, including advice on book reading and narration. A control arm will receive a brief nutrition intervention and complete the same number of recordings as the treatment group. The control group will complete the same assessment schedule as the treatment group. Assessment data will aid in evaluating the effects of the TMW intervention. This pilot work is a critical step in understanding the language environment provided by parents of low-SES, the effectiveness of objective feedback, and the potential for change and improvement in parental behavior. After establishing a baseline of parent-child communication levels, LENA recordings will be performed at regular intervals to provide essential feedback and motivation for parents to continually optimize the language environment they provide for their children.