The article below may contain offensive and/or incorrect content.
Preterm birth (< 37 gestational weeks) is associated with long-term risks for health and neurodevelopment, but recently, studies have also started exploring how preterm birth affects early language development in the 1st year of life. Because the timing and quality of auditory and visual input is very different for preterm versus full-term infants, audiovisual speech perception in early development may be particularly sensitive to preterm birth. We tested extremely preterm to late preterm infants at 8 months postnatal age (28 to 36 weeks of gestation), as well as 2 full-term comparison groups with similar postnatal (8 months) and maturational (6 months) ages, on visual scanning of a video showing a French–English bilingual woman speaking in the infants' native language (French) and a nonnative language (English). Preterm infants showed similar scanning patterns for both languages, failing to differentiate between native and nonnative languages in their looking, unlike both groups of full-term infants, who looked more to the eyes than the mouth for the native language compared with the nonnative language. No clear relationship between scanning patterns and degree of prematurity was found. These findings are the first to show that audiovisual speech perception is affected in even later-born preterm infants, thus identifying a particularly sensitive deficit in early speech processing. Further research will need to investigate how preterms' special vulnerability in audiovisual speech processing may contribute to the other language difficulties found in these populations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)





Departments
Authors
Libraries
Current Articles
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Science News » NIMH’s Dr. Andrea Beckel-Mitchener Named Deputy Director of NIH BRAIN Initiative
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Science News » NIMH Director’s Statement: Our Commitment to Ending Structural Racism in Biomedical Research
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Video » Let’s Talk About Eating Disorders with NIMH Grantee Dr. Cynthia Bulik
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Scientific Meeting » NIMH Livestream Event: Let’s Talk About Eating Disorders with NIMH Grantee Dr. Cynthia Bulik
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Science News » New Experiences Enhance Learning by Resetting Key Brain Circuit
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Blog Post » From Brain Mechanisms to Novel Therapies: Understanding and Treating Eating Disorders
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Video » GREAT: Helpful Practices to Manage Stress and Anxiety
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Video » What are the different types of clinical research?
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Blog Post » Enhancing and maintaining a culture of inclusive excellence: The NIH Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) Program
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: The snowy countries losing their identity
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Science News » Study Identifies Risk Factors for Elevated Anxiety in Young Adults During COVID-19 Pandemic
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Keep paying attention to your kids' mental health in this pandemic
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Video » What is an MRI?
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Video » What is a blood draw?
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Video » What is Clinical Research?
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Science News » Gene Readouts Contribute To Distinctness of Mental Disorders
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Science News » Adaptive screener may help identify youth at risk of suicide
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: How conspiracy theories undermine people’s trust in COVID-19 vaccines
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Curing PTSD with a shot: The new treatments that are changing lives
- Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Feeling disconnected from your partner?