Preterm birth can have a dramatic impact on early development. Cognitive and linguistic delays are frequent, but we still know too little about how language develops after moderate-to-late prematurity. François et al. asked babies to associate words or pseudo-words with familiar or unfamiliar objects in various conditions. Association abilities were inferred from the standard Preferred Looking Time (PLT) measure. While Full Term babies (FT) successfully mapped together similar sounding pairs of novel words, late-to-moderate preterm babies (L-PMT) could not. These results suggest that late to moderate preterm birth can hinder basic associative learning mechanisms, especially when fine temporal speech features are involved.
For this study, Clément François (LPL) together with Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells (ILCB IMERA chair) and their co-authors have been awarded the second scientific price of the 5 senses for kids foundation.
Clément François, Antoni Rodriguez‐Fornells, Xim Cerda‐Company, Thaïs Agut, and Laura Bosch.
Impact of late to moderate preterm birth on minimal pair word‐learning.
2024. Child Development, cdev.14160. — @HAL.
Synthèse de l’étude en français