Thirty Million Words Project: A Feasibility Trial
Condition: Parental Language Behaviors
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The purpose of the proposed research is to evaluate the Thirty Million Words (TMW)
      Intervention through a randomized, controlled pilot study. The primary goal of the
      intervention is to enrich the early language learning environment of children from
      low-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds by targeting parent skills that relate to adult
      word input and conversational turn taking. The investigators hypothesize that receiving the
      TMW intervention will result in changes in parent behaviors.
    

Detailed description: 
      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.
    

Intervention name(s): LENA Linguistic Feedback Reports; Home Visiting Educational Session; Childhood Nutrition Education
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): LENA feedback reports show hourly/daily estimates for AWC/CTC and TV/electronic media. The feedback reports will include data obtained from LENA home audio recordings that the families complete. Feedback reports are only given to parents for 8 weekly recordings. The parent does not receive a feedback report for the baseline recordings or the follow-up recordings.; A research assistant visited the homes of the participants to discuss strategies, skills, and barriers related to enriching children's language environments. The visits included a multi-media educational module, video modeling exercise, goal setting, and linguistic feedback report review. There were 8 weekly home visits in the intervention program.; The childhood nutrition education intervention is a brief home-visiting intervention during which parents receive information on nutrition from a research assistant. The intervention mirrored the experimental group's educational intervention and decreased the likelihood of differences between groups being the result of attentional effects. This intervention is received by the control group.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single (Participant)
Primary purpose: Health Services Research
Keywords: Language; Behavior change; Intervention; Home visiting; Child language development