TV / Electronic Sound
What is TV / Electronic Sound?
LENA classifies sounds from an electronic speaker as TV / Electronic Sound. Examples include sounds from:
- an actual television
- a radio, stereo, or blue-tooth speaker
- a toy that "talks," plays music, or makes sounds
- white noise machine (could be classified as TV or noise)
- crib mobile, bouncy chair, baby swing, etc. that plays music or sounds
- laptop, desktop, or tablet speakers (YouTube, Zoom meeting, video games, etc.)
- smart speaker (Alexa, Google Home, etc.)
- speakerphone (voice call, FaceTime, Skype, TikTok, etc.)
- speakers connected to a gaming console
This category represents time during which TV/electronic sounds were the dominant signal in the child's auditory environment - not faint in the background or overlapping with human speech.
LENA can accidentally classify ambient sounds as TV in certain unusual situations. For example, if the device is left sitting on a hard surface, it can pick up what's known as "room hum" or "room tone" -- the vibration of heating and AC ventilation, electronics fans, and other subtle sounds that are around us all the time -- through that hard surface. (Lay your ear on a desk or table to hear it for yourself!). When these ambient sounds are amplified and overlaid with live human voices, LENA's algorithms may find the result to be more similar to TV than to human speech.