Purpose
to compare the performance of communicative skills in children born preterm, extremely preterm and typical with chronological age between two and three years.
Methods
participated in the study 72 children were divided into four groups: 20 preterm infants (GE-I), 16 extremely preterm infants (GE-II) and 36 children (GC-I and GC-II) with typical development, chronological age between two to three years, matched for age chronological and sex. The evaluation consisted of the application of the Protocol Anamnesis and Communicative Behavior Observation. Statistical analysis consisted of “t” Student and Mann-Whitney test (p ≤ 0.05).
Results
comparing the premature and typical groups (GE-I and GC-I and GE-II and GC-II), regarding communication skills, there were significant differences, despite the heterogeneity in performance of preterm and extremely preterm infants. Comparing the premature (GE-I and GE-II) showed no significant differences, however, GE-I got superior performance in all categories, except for category gestures. The categories of lower occurrence for GE-I were: respect shift change, participate and maintain dialogic activity. For GE-II were: participate and maintain dialogic activity, perform complex orders, and start respecting turn-taking, report functions, provide and produce sentences.
Conclusion
there were significant differences in communicative performance of preterm and extremely preterm, as compared to typical children, but there were no significant differences when comparing the preterm groups. Although the results indicate that the premature groups tend to delay the development of communication skills, but the groups have not shown to be homogeneous.
Infant, Premature; Language; Child Development, Language Development
