Indici predittivi precoci e fattori di rischio e di protezione nello sviluppo comunicativo-linguistico di bambini nati pretermine

The present research aimed at investigating the communicative and linguistic development of preterm children during their first two years of life. Our main purpose was to assess gestural, vocal and verbal aspects of communicative development from a transactional model of development, taking into account the mutually constitutive dynamic interplay between the perinatal vulnerability of preterm children and their developmental context. The mother-child dyads who participated to the four studies reported in the present work were selected from a larger longitudinal research project concerning the individuation of early indicators of risk for language delays among atypical populations. The first study examined the development of gestural communication in the second year of life of children, a theme that is widely overlooked in the literature on the development of preterm infants. Overall, our findings showed that the developmental patterns of gestural communication of premature children are similar to those observed in at-term children with the only exception of a delay in the emergence of gesture-plus-word combinations. Moreover, results documented that the emergence of certain types of gestures, such as pointing and the production of gesture-plus-word combinations, represented good predictors of later productive and receptive lexical competences and of the emergence of word combinations at two year of age. The second study investigated the prelinguistic and verbal development of preterm children from 6 to 24 months of age. Starting from 18 months of age, significant differences were found between the communicative abilities of preterm and full-term children. Premature children showed delays both in lexical and in morphosyntactic development. Furthermore, we found differences in the communicative productivity between the two groups of children in exam, suggesting a lack of responsiveness of premature children during mother-child interactions. Regression analyses conducted on these data also underlined several predictive relationships between maternal educational level and child’s advances in language acquisition. Finally, significative associations between preverbal and linguistic development also emerged. The last two studies focused on the investigation of the linguistic context in which children born prematurely develop. Specifically, the third study examined several structural features of linguistic input directed to the children, together with modifications of maternal verbal input over time. The data documented that maternal utterances directed to the child tend to become more complex as the child grows older; moreover, maternal linguistic fine-tuning seems to be influenced by child’s motor competences. This latter result suggests that infants’ motor skill maturation may function as a major signal for mothers of preterm babies to adjust aspects of their linguistic interactive style. The last study concerns functional aspects of the communicative exchanges between the children and their mothers. In keeping with the previous studies, our analyses took into account how functional aspects of the maternal utterances addressed to the children may change over time and with children communicative achievements. Results showed that regardless of the age of the children maternal input directed to preterm children is strongly characterized by the use of a conversational and affective style. Differently, mothers of full-term children tend to use a more tutorial and informative communicative style. The characteristics of maternal verbal input directed to premature children contribute, together with other factors, such as maternal level of education, to negatively impact later children language development.