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Language abilities following prematurity, periventricular brain injury, and cerebral palsy
H M Feldman1, J E Janosky, M S Scher
1Department of Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Insights
Premature birth can impact language development. This study found no significant language differences in toddlers with cerebral palsy or brain injury compared to controls, though some individuals needed intervention.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Pediatrics
- Neuroscience
- Linguistics
Background:
- Premature birth is a risk factor for neurological and developmental challenges.
- Perinatal brain injury can affect motor and cognitive functions.
- Early language development in at-risk populations requires careful assessment.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare language abilities in premature children with and without cerebral palsy (CP) and brain injury.
- To investigate the relationship between brain injury, motor impairment, and early language skills.
- To identify potential language delays warranting intervention in this cohort.
Main Methods:
- Comparative study of three groups of 6-month-old boys: CP with periventricular white matter injury, brain injury without motor impairment, and controls.
- Language samples analyzed using the Child Language Data Exchange System (CLaSS).
- Lexical diversity (types/tokens per minute), morphosyntax (morphemes, MLU, IPSoS), and verbal productivity (utterances per minute) assessed.
Main Results:
- No significant differences in lexical, morphosyntactic, or verbal productivity measures were found among the three groups.
- Lexical and morphosyntactic skills strongly correlated with general cognitive scores (McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities).
- Individual children across all groups exhibited language delays requiring intervention.
Conclusions:
- Specific language impairments are not definitively associated with CP or perinatal brain injury in premature children at this early developmental stage.
- Early language development appears resilient to these early insults, but individual variability necessitates monitoring.
- Timely language intervention is crucial for children experiencing delays, irrespective of group classification.
Abstract:
This study compares language abilities in three groups of children who were born prematurely: children with bilateral spastic cerebral palsy associated with perinatal injury to the periventricular white matter of the brain; a group with similar brain injury but no motor impairment; and a group of controls with no brain injuries. Six boys in each group were 36 to 39 months of age at the time of the study. All achieved a standard score above 80 on the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities at the same age. Language samples, generated during parent-child interaction, were analyzed using the Child Language Data Exchange System. The size and diversity of the lexicon was assessed using types and tokens per minute. Morpho-syntactic skills were assessed using number of grammatical morphemes, mean length of utterance and the Index of Productive Syntax. Verbal productivity was assessed using number of utterances per minute. No significant differences were observed among any of the groups on any measure. Measures of the lexicon and morpho-syntactic skills were highly correlated with the scores on the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. The data demonstrated that specific language impairments were not associated with cerebral palsy or brain injury after prematurity at this early stage of language development. However, individual children within each of the groups had delays in skill attainment that warranted language intervention.