Language in 3-year-olds born preterm and term (Sanchez et al., 2019)
Katherine Sanchez
Alicia J. Spittle
Jessica O. Boyce
Linda Leembruggen
Anastasia Mantelos
Stephanie Mills
Naomi Mitchell
Emily Neil
Miya St John
Jasmin Treloar
Angela T. Morgan
10.23641/asha.11368073.v1
https://asha.figshare.com/articles/dataset/Language_in_3-year-olds_born_preterm_and_term_Sanchez_et_al_2019_/11368073
<div><b>Purpose: </b>Language difficulties are prevalent among children born preterm. Existing studies have largely used standardized language tests, providing limited scope for detailed descriptive examination of preterm language. This study aimed to examine differences in conversational language between children born < 30 weeks and at term as well as correlations between language sample analysis (LSA) and a standardized language tool.</div><div><b>Method:</b> Two hundred four 3-year-olds (103 born < 30 weeks, 101 born at term) recruited at birth provided a 10-min language sample and completed the Preschool Language Scales–Fifth Edition (I. Zimmerman, Steiner, & Pond, 2011). LSA was conducted using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts and Index of Productive Syntax. Group differences were analyzed using linear regression, and Pearson correlation coefficient (coef) was used to determine correlations between measures.</div><div><b>Results:</b> Children born < 30 weeks scored lower than term-born peers on multiple metrics when controlled for confounding factors (sex, high social risk, multilingualism, and diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorders), including mean length of utterance in morphemes (coef = –0.28, 95% confidence interval [CI] [–0.56, 0.01]) and words (coef = –0.29, 95% CI [–0.53, –0.05]), number of different word roots (coef = –10.04, 95% CI [–17.93, –2.14]), and Index of Productive Syntax sentence structures (coef = –1.81, 95% CI [–3.10, –0.52]). Other variables (e.g., number of utterances, number of nouns and adjectives) were not significantly different between groups. LSA and the Preschool Language Scales–Fifth Edition were at most moderately correlated (≤ .45).</div><div><b>Conclusions: </b>Three-year-old children born preterm demonstrated poorer conversational language than children born at term, with some specific areas of deficit emerging. Furthermore, formal assessment and LSA appear to provide relatively distinct and yet complementary data to guide diagnostic and intervention decisions.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S1. </b>Comparison between participants with < 50 versus ≥ 50 utterances.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S2. </b>Interrater reliability. </div><div><br></div><div>Sanchez, K., Spittle, A. J., Boyce, J. O., Leembruggen, L., Mantelos, A., Mills, S., Mitchell, N., Neil, E., St John, M., Treloar, J., & Morgan, A. T. (2019). Conversational language in 3-year-old children born very preterm and at term. <i>Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. </i>Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-19-00153</div>
2019-12-19 23:28:52
language
conversation
children
young children
preterm
very preterm
at term
ability
impairment
difficulties
< 30 weeks
language sample analysis
standardized
assessment
Preschool Language Scales-Fifth Edition
Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts
Index of Productive Syntax
metrics
confounding factors
mean length of utterance
morphemes
words
word roots
sentence structure
deficit
diagnostic
intervention
decisions
Language