Language in 3-year-olds born preterm and term (Sanchez et al., 2019)

Purpose: Language difficulties are prevalent among children born preterm. Existing studies have largely used standardized language tests, providing limited scope for detailed descriptive examination of preterm language. This study aimed to examine differences in conversational language between children born Method: Two hundred four 3-year-olds (103 born Results: Children born Conclusions: Three-year-old children born preterm demonstrated poorer conversational language than children born at term, with some specific areas of deficit emerging. Furthermore, formal assessment and LSA appear to provide relatively distinct and yet complementary data to guide diagnostic and intervention decisions.Supplemental Material S1. Comparison between participants with Supplemental Material S2. Interrater reliability. Sanchez, K., Spittle, A. J., Boyce, J. O., Leembruggen, L., Mantelos, A., Mills, S., Mitchell, N., Neil, E., St John, M., Treloar, J., & Morgan, A. T. (2019). Conversational language in 3-year-old children born very preterm and at term. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-19-00153