Development of early linguistic abilities in very preterm infants and children

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 linguistic abilities are affected by preterm birth and are related to later and more advanced language development. In this symposium we will present results of five prospective longitudinal studies on early language development of very preterm infants exposed to different mother tongues (English, Finnish, Italian and Spanish). All five papers investigate preterms’ lexical abilities in the first two years of life through the use of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. In addition, each paper investigates the relations between lexical abilities and, respectively, auditory processing in the first year (Finnish preterms), word-segmentation in the first year (Spanish preterms), gestural abilities in the first and second year (Italian preterms), language skills at 2 years (Finnish preterms), language skills at 4 years (New Zealand preterms). The findings of the papers contribute to understand: 1) the developmental trajectory of early auditory, linguistic and gestural abilities in preterms belonging to different mother tongues; 2) whether preterms’ early linguistic abilities are predictive of later language development; 3) the relation between parental reports and other measures of preterms’ language development. The discussion will focus on ways in which data collected from preterm infants of different mother tongues and with multiple tools lead to a fuller and deeper understanding of the effects of preterm birth on language development. Special emphasis will be placed on the way that early measures can predict later linguistic development in preterm infants and identify those with linguistic delays. The theoretical, methodological and clinical implications of these results will be discussed.