The central aim of the current study is to evaluate the phonological development of children with very low birth weight, thus contributing with empirical evidence to the debate on the role of phonological variables in the assessment of child language development. A study based on production data from 30 children aged 3 and a half years to 4 and a half years was performed; 15 children were part of the population with very low birth weight and the remaining 15 were part of the population with appropriate birth weight; both groups were paired by gender and age. The children's segmental performance in the two groups studied was observed; the data analysis was based on the relationship between the production of each segmental consonant from the European Portuguese segmental inventory and its distribution as a function of the tested phonological variables position within the word, syllable constituency and word stress. The main purpose of the study was then to test the adequacy of these phonological variables to the identification of differences between the two groups of children's phonological development. By using the chi-square test and the frequency comparison, the main results showed that children with very low birth weight presented a lower verbal performance when compared to the normality pattern, with respect to the phonological variables under evaluation.
Very low weight infants; Phonological development; Word; Syllable; Syllabic constituents; Word stress
