SPEECH AND LANGUAGE-DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN BORN AT LESS-THAN-OR-EQUAL-TO-32 WEEKS GESTATION - A 5-YEAR PROSPECTIVE FOLLOW-UP-STUDY

Speech and language comprehension and production were assessed at the age of 5 years in a cohort of children horn preterm at less than or eq ual to 32 weeks' gestational age (N=55) in comparison with children bo rn at term and of similar age, sex, and social backgrounds, Data both including and excluding major neurological disabilities are presented. Mean performance for the entire group of preterm children was signifi cantly lower than for the controls on most of the measures including t he composite IQ scores. When the nine children who had major neurologi cal disabilities were excluded from the preterm group, statistically s ignificant differences were found on four of the total 12 speech and l anguage measures. Intellectually normal preterm children without major neurological disability were slower than the controls on rapid word r etrieval. In addition, difficulties in comprehending relative concepts were typical for the preterm children. The results suggest 'subtle dy snomia', which is indicative of later reading problems. On global verb al measures and on the basic speech and language aspects the study gro ups did not differ, Specific language impairment, defined as a discrep ancy of >1SD between Performance IQ sad Verbal IQ scores, showed a ten dency to be more common in the control group, Within both the study gr oups, the boys showed a tendency for a greater discrepancy between the ir Performance and Verbal IQ scores.