The effect of very preterm birth on development of word comprehension, gesture and word production.

Background. There is a growing evidence that very preterm birth, even in absence of cerebral damage, may affect language development. However, limited work is available on how early communicative and linguistic abilities are affected by preterm birth and are related to later language development. Aims of the study. First, to examine longitudinally the development of gestures, word comprehension and word production from 12 to 24 months in very preterm infants. Second, to investigate whether the abilities observed at 12 months are related to word production at 24 months. Methods. One hundred monolingual Italian preterms, born in the Unit of Neonatology of Bologna University, with a gestational age <33 weeks and no major cerebral damage, and a comparison group of 20 monolingual healthy Italian fullterms were followed longitudinally at 12, 18 and 24 months (corrected age for preterms) by administering to parents the Italian short form of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. Results. The results showed that preterms, compared to fullterms, had a slower acquisition in word comprehension and gestures at 18 months and in word production at 24 months with a higher percentage of preterms with a lexical production at risk (< 10th percentile) with respect to fullterms. In both samples, word comprehension, gestures and word production at 12 months were associated with word production at 24 months. Conclusions. Our findings highlight that both word comprehension and word production and gesture abilities contribute to outline the early language developmental trajectory of very preterm infants and to identify those infants at risk for language development.