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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.
- Source :
-
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR [J Speech Lang Hear Res] 2021 Jul 16; Vol. 64 (7), pp. 2715-2733. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Jul 02. - Publication Year :
- 2021
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Abstract
- 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.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1558-9102
- Volume :
- 64
- Issue :
- 7
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 34215160
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00636