BOULDER-Keeping conversations short and sweet may be a great time management tool at work, but when it comes to talking to our babies - more is better.

Research shows that high-achieving children have heard about 33 million words by their third birthday. Low-achieving children, on the other hand, have heard only 11 million.
 Not only are the children who have been talked to achieving more, they're testing higher. The difference between hearing 33 million words compared with 11 million results in an extra 40 IQ points, according to research.

Betty Hart and Todd Risley spent close to a decade researching why some children do better than others in school. They published their report: Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, in 1995.

The findings proved that the number of words young children hear strongly influences their ability later on to do well academically. No other variables like parents' education level or socioeconomic status played as strongly a role as the sheer amount of words the children heard.

Infoture Inc., founded in 2004, built on the Hart and Risley research with an additional research study entitled the Power of Talk. The Boulder company invested millions of dollars into developing a tool to help parents measure the number of words their children take in daily.

"It's taken three and a half years to get a workable and reliable product," says Mia Moe, Infoture's director of marketing. Language ENvironment Analysis, or LEN, analyzes the number of words spoken to a child minus background noise including television.

The digital language processor, or DLP, that records the number of words weighs about two ounces and slips into the pocket of a child's outfit. The clothing, also available from Infoture, is designed to provide the best acoustic quality.

At the end of the day, parents connect the processor to their computer through the USB port, and the LENA software processes the file. "We get rid of all the noise and report only the words that are meaningful to the child," Moe says. "TV and radio words are not included in the count."

In addition to learning how many words their child heard during the day, parents can get a developmental snapshot. It provides percentile ranking that compares their child's developmental age to chronological age with other children.

The complete LENA system includes the processor, the software, a USB cable, chargers and two items of clothing. The cost is $399, and parents generally use the processor and check results two to three times a month, according to Moe.

Infoture launched a pilot version of LENA - a study that will last 10 weeks - in mid-August. Twenty five parents in the United Kingdom and 120 in the U.S. are participating in the pilot.

"The pilot program is finding that parents have increased the number of words they use by about 30 percent," Moe says.

Co-owners Terry and Judi Paul started Infoture with $16 million in private funding. "Developmental costs have been extensive - we don't know when we can really anticipate recovering those costs - a lot depends on the professional version," Moe says, adding that it could be as early as next year.

 "We're on track to release the professional version in early December as well as the research version."

Moe expects the professional version to sell for about $2,000 and the research version to sell for about $4,000.

Pediatricians and speech language professionals will use the professional version with their patients, she says. "They'll use the software for 50 to 100 children - sending the DLPs home with parents."

The research version gets into more broad detail. "Researchers are interested in different things," Moe says. "We can detect the times a TV is on and how close it is to a child, for example. In addition to the number of times kids are watching TV a day, researchers may use it to look at different socioeconomic influences.

"Researchers are calling us everyday now," she says in response to the question about customers wanting to buy the LENA system. "We're holding a symposium in October on delayed speech children that's hosted by the University of Colorado's Speech, Language and Hearing Department."

The company plans to introduce the professional and research version at that time.
Until now alternatives to the LENA system have been for researchers to tape record the number of words spoken to children. The time required to do it and transcribe it combined with the intrusiveness of a researcher made the process less than ideal.

"There's really no comparison. We get 12 to 16 hours of natural language, and there's no researcher present.

"It's really simple. You don't have to have flashcards or lesson plans to help your child thrive - just enjoy your child and make an effort to talk more."