Impact of Prematurity on Language Skills at School Age

Abstract

This study compared school-age outcomes for 57 children born prematurely, at ≤32 weeks or <1500g, with outcomes for 57 children born at full term with no reported perinatal complications. The two groups were matched for age, sex, race, and parental education. Data came from the Western Reserve Reading Project and included discourse-level language samples collected at three points in time, each a year apart. In addition, standardized test results were obtained for IQ, digit span, and global language ability. The language samples were analyzed to yield a number of semantic and syntactic measures which were condensed via factor analysis to a semantic score and a syntactic score. Regression models showed statistically significant differences between the two groups for standardized test results, with more ambiguous results for the discourse-level language measures. The control group outperformed the premature group on both semantic and syntactic measures, but those differences never reached statistical significance and narrowed markedly at the third-year assessment point. These findings suggest that in the absence of frank neurological impairment, sophisticated semantic and syntactic skills may be relatively intact in the conversational and narrative language of children born prematurely. The decrements observed on standardized assessments of language and cognition may arise from deficits in domains such as attention or executive function, rather than reflecting significant impairment in their ability to learn language.

Communicative performance and vocabulary domain in preschool preterm infants

“…Children born prematurely with low risk of neurological sequelae in preschool age may have greater difficulties than their peers born to term, this should be known by teachers and families so they can interfere in this and facilitate the integration and learning of the children at school 30 . Thus, all preterm infants should participate in long-term monitoring programs to track their development.…”

“…Observation of Communicative Behavior (OCB) 30 . The participants were placed in structured and semi-structured situations held during a session of about 50 minutes with playful and interactive activities.…”

“…Language is crucial for communication, academic performance and social function, therefore, it must be accompanied throughout child development 24 , 25 , 30 . Regarding the development of language, studies show that there is a high probability of developmental delay for both receptive and expressive processes for premature infants, or even that they punctuate relatively less in evaluations of these processes when compared to children born at term 3 , 5 , 11 , 12 , 16 , 20 , 22 , 28 , 29 .…”

“…Studies on language development focus on the effects of prematurity on the performance of children in preschool and other school years, due to the possibility of difficulties in cognitive skills, particularly attention and executive functions, reduced performance in language on different linguistic levels, as well as behavioral problems 1 , 15 , 17 , 20 , 30 , 31 .…”

Is self-regulation “All in the family”? Testing environmental effects using within-family quasi-experiments

“…At enrollment when the children were in Kindergarten or first grade, each twin’s birth weight and the gestational length of the pregnancy were reported by the mothers in a questionnaire (Smith, DeThorne, Logan, Channell, & Petrill, 2014). Two years later (in the third annual wave of this longitudinal study), each twin was assessed for short term working memory using the sum of area scores from the digit span/memory for sentences subtest of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (Thorndike, Hagen, & Sattler, 1986), using standard scores based on the IQ distribution of M = 100 and SD = 15.…”