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Purpose: Wide interindividual variability characterizes language development in the general and at-risk populations of up to 3 years of age. We adopted a complex approach that considers multiple aspects of lexical and grammatical skills to identify language profiles in low-risk preterm and full-term children. We also investigated biological and environmental predictors and relations between language profiles and cognitive and motor skills.Method: We enrolled 200 thirty-month-old Italian-speaking children—consisting of 100 low-risk preterm and 100 comparable full-term children. Parents filled out the Italian version of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories Infant and Toddler Short Forms (word comprehension, word production, and incomplete and complete sentence production), Parent Report of Children’s Abilities–Revised (cognitive score), and Early Motor Questionnaire (fine motor, gross motor, perception–action, and total motor scores) questionnaires.Results: A latent profile analysis identified four profiles: poor (21%), with lowest receptive and expressive vocabulary and absent or limited word combination and phonological accuracy; weak (22.5%), with average receptive but limited expressive vocabulary, incomplete sentences, and absent or limited phonological accuracy; average (25%), with average receptive and expressive vocabulary, use of incomplete and complete sentences, and partial phonological accuracy; and advanced (31.5%), with highest expressive vocabulary, complete sentence production, and phonological accuracy. Lower cognitive and motor scores characterized the poor profile, and lower cognitive and perception–action scores characterized the weak profile. Having a nonworking mother and a father with lower education increased the probability of a child’s assignment to the poor profile, whereas being small for gestational age at birth increased it for the weak profile.Conclusions: These findings suggest a need for a person-centered and cross-domain approach to identifying children with language weaknesses and implementing timely interventions. An online procedure for data collection and data-driven analyses based on multiple lexical and grammatical skills appear to be promising methodological innovations.Supplemental Material S1. Questions of the Italian version of the MB-CDI Words and Sentences Short Form (Caselli et al., 2015) addressing the presence/absence of communicative gestures, decontextualized comprehension, verbal imitation, phonological accuracy, and symbolic play. Supplemental Material S2. Fit Statistics of the LPA Models.Supplemental Material S3. Estimated means, standard errors, and 95% confidence intervals of word comprehension, word production, incomplete sentences, and complete sentences across the four latent profiles.Supplemental Material S4. Flow chart of the online investigation on low-risk preterm children at 30 months of age. Sansavini, A., Zuccarini, M., Gibertoni, D., Bello, A., Caselli, M. C., Corvaglia, L., & Guarini, A. (2021). Language profiles and their relation to cognitive and motor skills at 30 months of age: An online investigation of low-risk preterm and full-term children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00636

Purpose Wide interindividual variability characterizes language development in the general and at-risk populations of up to 3 years of age. We adopted a complex approach that considers multiple aspects of lexical and grammatical skills to identify language profiles in low-risk preterm and full-term children. We also investigated biological and environmental predictors and relations between language profiles and cognitive and motor skills. Method We enrolled 200 thirty-month-old Italian-speaking children—consisting of 100 low-risk preterm and 100 comparable full-term children. Parents filled out the Italian version of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories Infant and Toddler Short Forms (word comprehension, word production, and incomplete and complete sentence production), Parent Report of Children's Abilities–Revised (cognitive score), and Early Motor Questionnaire (fine motor, gross motor, perception–action, and total motor scores) questionnaires. Results A latent profile analysis identified four profiles: poor (21%), with lowest receptive and expressive vocabulary and absent or limited word combination and phonological accuracy; weak (22.5%), with average receptive but limited expressive vocabulary, incomplete sentences, and absent or limited phonological accuracy; average (25%), with average receptive and expressive vocabulary, use of incomplete and complete sentences, and partial phonological accuracy; and advanced (31.5%), with highest expressive vocabulary, complete sentence production, and phonological accuracy. Lower cognitive and motor scores characterized the poor profile, and lower cognitive and perception–action scores characterized the weak profile. Having a nonworking mother and a father with lower education increased the probability of a child's assignment to the poor profile, whereas being small for gestational age at birth increased it for the weak profile. Conclusions These findings suggest a need for a person-centered and cross-domain approach to identifying children with language weaknesses and implementing timely interventions. An online procedure for data collection and data-driven analyses based on multiple lexical and grammatical skills appear to be promising methodological innovations. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14818179

Background: An increasing body of research on typically and atypically developing infants has shown that motor skills play an important role in language development. To date, however, the role of specific object exploration skills for early gesture and vocabulary development has not been investigated in extremely low gestational age infants (ELGA, GA < 28 weeks), who are at greater risk for motor and language delays than full-term (FT) infants. Purpose: This longitudinal study examined relations between 6-month active exploratory behaviors and 12- month word comprehension, gestures and vocal production, controlling for cognitive performance and neonatal condition (ELGA vs FT). Methods: Forty infants, 20 ELGA and 20 FT, and their mothers participated in the study. Mother-infant play interaction was video-recorded at 6 and 12 months. Oral and manual object exploration at 6 months and spontaneous gestures and vocal production at 12 months were coded. Word comprehension was evaluated with the Italian version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI parent questionnaire at 12 months. Cognitive performance was examined with the Griffiths Mental Developmental Scales at 6 months and the Bayley-III Scales at 12 months. Results: Regression analyses showed that after accounting for cognitive performance and neonatal condition, oral exploration was related to word comprehension, and manual exploration to gestures and vocal production in the overall sample. Conclusions: Cascading effects of specific object exploration skills on gestures and language comprehension and production in preterm infants and FT infants are discussed. Clinical implications for early assessment of and interventions involving object exploration skills, which may affect language development, are considered for the preterm population.

Delays in the motor domain have been frequently observed in preterm children, especially those born at an extremely low gestational age (ELGA; < 28 weeks GA). However, early motor exploration has received relatively little attention despite its relevance for object knowledge and its impact on cognitive and language development. The present study aimed at comparing early object exploration in 20 ELGA and 20 full-term (FT) infants at 6 months of age during a 5-minute mother-infant play interaction. Object engagement (visual vs manual), visual object engagement (no act vs reach), manual object engagement (passive vs active), and active object manipulation (mouthing, transferring, banging, turn/rotating, shaking, fingering) were analyzed. Moreover, the Griffiths Mental Development Scales 0-2 years (1996) were administered to the infants. Relative to FT peers, ELGA infants spent more time in visual engagement, and less time in manual engagement, active manipulation, mouthing, and turning/rotating. Moreover, they had lower scores on general psychomotor development, eye & hand coordination, and performance abilities. Close relationships emerged between manual object engagement and psychomotor development. Clinical implications of these results in terms of early evaluation of action schemes in ELGA infants and the provision of intervention programs for supporting these abilities are discussed.