Preliminary Data: Powered Mobility Intervention with Language Monitoring for Children with Cerebral Palsy

Purpose: Adapted ride-on cars offer an affordable mobility intervention that provides broader access to a child's environment. Such newfound independence is a unique opportunity to examine changes in environmental language and communicative participation as children acquire mobility. New technologies such as the Language Environmental Analysis (LENA) system hold promise for evaluating naturalistic language interactions but have not yet been applied to children with cerebral palsy with physical and/or communication impairments. This study sought to use LENA with a sample of children with cerebral palsy to determine the feasibility of monitoring environmental language patterns during longitudinal mobility intervention. Method: LENA's adult word counts, conversational turns, and child vocalizations were compared across three time points for participants aged 16-49 months with a range of communication skills (indexed by Communication Function Classification System Levels I-IV). Results: Feasibility was established with acceptable criterion validity during active drive time. Results had large effect sizes, likely diluted by sample size and heterogeneity. Conclusions: Limitations include small sample size, nonprescriptive use of powered mobility devices, and lack of control group. Future studies should incorporate these features to more closely examine communication patterns.