Advances in Measuring the Intersection of Talk and Contextual Features on the Early Childhood Playground

Outdoor play environments such as playgrounds provide opportunities for children to develop language, social-emotional, cognitive, and motor skills through interactions with peers and adults. Traditionally, direct observation has been used to measure child and teacher talk on the playground. In this proof-of-concept study, we used sensing technology tools, namely the Ubisense and the Language ENvironmental Analysis (LENA), to capture and examine talk among young children and educators on a U.S. early childhood center playground. We collected over 28,000 1-s speech-audio and location data points with toddlers ( n = 11). Descriptive results indicate that children with developmental disabilities/delays (DD/D) experienced more talk from educators and peers compared to those with typical development in specific areas of the playground. The use of sensing technology represents a groundbreaking advancement for understanding variations in talk between teachers and children in an outdoor play environment.