Early lexical processes and the role of early mother-infant interaction in extremely preterm infants

Early lexical processes and the role of early mother-infant interaction in extremely preterm infants Alessandra Sansavini, Annalisa Guarini, Silvia Savini, Veronica Zavagli Department of Psychology, University of Bologna (Italy) Recent studies have shown that lexical development can be affected by preterm birth with delays with respect to typically developing children. However, preterm children’s early lexical processes have not been enough investigated as well as the role of early mother-infant interaction in building infants’ lexicon. We addressed this issue by examining extremely preterm infants’ communicative and linguistic abilities, as well as the dynamics of mother-infant interaction and communicative style, compared to those of typically developing (TD) children. Seventeen monolingual Italian extremely preterms without severe cerebral damages and neurosensorial impairments (GA <=28 weeks) were compared to 11 monolingual Italian full-terms. At 12 months infants’ observational measures of communicative and linguistic abilities, quality of dyadic coregulation and maternal communicative function as well as direct (Bayley-III) and indirect (MB-CDI) measures of infants’ linguistic and cognitive development were employed. At 24 months the same direct and indirect measures and a lexical test (Picture Naming Game) were administered. Linguistic and cognitive difficulties were found in extremely preterm infants through direct and indirect tools and observational measures already at 12 months, becoming more evident at 24 months. The role of early positive and coregulated mother-infant interaction in relation to lexical production at 24 months as well as the dynamic process of lexical building through multimodal communication will be discussed. The methodological implications of this approach will also be considered.