Speech and Language Skills of Low-Risk Preterm and Full-Term Late Talkers: The Role of Child Factors and Parent Input

Abstract

Among children in the third year of life, late talkers comprise from 9% to 20%. This range seems to increase when addressing preterm children. This study examined video-recorded child spontaneous speech during parent–child book sharing as well as linguistic skills reported through the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI) Short Form in 61 late talkers aged 30 months old (26 low-risk preterm, 8 females; 35 full-term, 12 females). Differences between low-risk preterm and full-term late talkers in child language measures and parental speech input were tested, as were the roles of child and parent factors on child language. Low-risk preterm and full-term late talkers showed similar speech and language skills. Similarly, no differences were found in measures of parental speech between groups. Child cognitive score, chronological age, and low-risk preterm status were positively associated with lexical diversity, rate, and composition of child speech production, whereas family history for language and/or learning disorders as well as parent measures of lexical diversity, rate, and grammatical complexity were negatively associated with the above child variables. In addition, child cognitive score and low-risk preterm status were positively associated with the MB-CDI measures of word and sentence production. Findings are discussed in terms of the need of good practices when following up on low-risk preterm children and of interventions targeting parents’ input to preterm and full-term late talkers.

Prevalence of Language Delay among Healthy Preterm Children, Language Outcomes and Predictive Factors

“…This means that children with serious biomedical complications or sensory, motor and cognitive handicaps may be unidentified, producing a confounding effect with prematurity on the outcomes. In contrast, a few studies, mostly carried out with healthy preterm children with a variety of GAs, have not found significant differences between PT and FT children in different measures of language development taken at different ages [13][14][15].…”

“…Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia seems to have a very detrimental effect on the possibility of PT children having language delay [27,30,31,[42][43][44]. Male gender has been found to increase the risk of language delay [28,31,35,36], and family history of language or learning disorders predicted lower language development [15].…”

“…Late talkers may have combined expressive and receptive delays or only expressive delays. The estimates of prevalence of LT or LD children oscillate between 9% and 20% of the population of children aged 24-36 months [15,19]. Some of these children (around 50-70%), called late bloomers, catch up to their typically developing (TD) peers by 4-5 years of age [20].…”

Special Issue: Preterm Birth: Research, Intervention and Developmental Outcomes

“…A first study finds that even if the preterm and full-term groups do not differ in parenting stress level and mind-mindedness (the caregivers’ representation of a child’s mental life), the mothers of preterm infants with higher stress show more non-attuned comments with their children [ 7 ]. In a second study, preterm (<37 weeks of gestation) and full-term late talkers do not differ in child language measures and parental speech input at 30 months [ 8 ]. However, child and parent risk and protective factors explain the interindividual variability in children’s spontaneous speech and reported language measures, which reveals a mutual influence between the late talkers’ speech and the quality of the parents’ speech input [ 8 ].…”

“…In a second study, preterm (<37 weeks of gestation) and full-term late talkers do not differ in child language measures and parental speech input at 30 months [ 8 ]. However, child and parent risk and protective factors explain the interindividual variability in children’s spontaneous speech and reported language measures, which reveals a mutual influence between the late talkers’ speech and the quality of the parents’ speech input [ 8 ]. Another study finds that healthy preterm children do not show cognitive delay at 22 and 60 months, even when including children with different degrees of immaturity [ 9 ].…”