• General movements
• Neurodevelopmental outcome
• Very low birth weight infants
• Very preterm infants

• Humans
• Female
• Male
• Infant
• Child Development
• Infant, Newborn
• Developmental Disabilities/diagnosis
• Developmental Disabilities/epidemiology
• Infant, Extremely Premature/growth & development
• Neurologic Examination
• Movement

• Cortical Neuron
• Encephalopathy of Prematurity
• Excitotoxicity
• Myelin
• Preterm

• Animals
• Corpus Callosum/pathology
• Corpus Callosum/drug effects
• Corpus Callosum/metabolism
• Disease Models, Animal
• N-Methylaspartate/toxicity
• Animals, Newborn
• Male
• Rats, Sprague-Dawley
• Myelin Basic Protein/metabolism
• Rats
• Motor Cortex/pathology
• Motor Cortex/drug effects
• Lateral Ventricles/pathology
• Lateral Ventricles/drug effects
• Motor Activity/drug effects
• Brain Diseases/pathology
• Brain Diseases/chemically induced
• Neurons/pathology
• Neurons/drug effects

• Child language development
• Computational modeling
• Language acquisition
• Prenatal language exposure

• Humans
• Female
• Language Development
• Pregnancy
• Computer Simulation
• Infant, Newborn
• Speech Perception/physiology
• Infant
• Learning/physiology
• Infant, Premature
• Language
• Speech

• Sleep timing
• behavioral problems
• children
• language difficulties
• meal timing
• melatonin-containing food consumption
• postnatal development

• Humans
• Male
• Female
• Melatonin/administration & dosage
• Child
• Child, Preschool
• Circadian Rhythm/physiology
• Sleep/physiology
• Meals
• Feeding Behavior
• Child Behavior
• Language Disorders/physiopathology
• Eating/physiology

• Humans
• Female
• Male
• Infant
• Infant, Premature/physiology
• Language Development
• Verbal Learning/physiology

• ANR-16-CONV-0002 Agence Nationale de la Recherche
• ANR-20-CE28-0017 Agence Nationale de la Recherche
• PSI2015-69132P Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad
• PGC 2018-097487-B-100 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
• PID 2021-128159NB-100 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
• Excellence initiative of Aix-Marseille University (A*MIDEX)

• Early intervention
• Efficacy
• Language development
• Premature birth
• Preterm infant
• Study report quality

• Humans
• Infant, Premature/growth & development
• Infant, Newborn
• Language Development
• Child, Preschool
• Infant
• Early Intervention, Educational/methods

• Infant
• Female
• Humans
• Infant, Newborn
• Adolescent
• Speech
• Infant, Premature
• Speech Perception
• Gestational Age
• Linguistics

• Electroencephalography
• Language perception
• Mother’s voice
• Preterm infants

• Female
• Infant
• Infant, Newborn
• Humans
• Mothers
• Infant, Premature
• Voice/physiology
• Speech
• Speech Perception/physiology

• Twins
• factor of environment
• repetition tasks
• singletons
• speech processing

• Child
• Humans
• Speech
• Hungary
• Twins
• Language

• Developmental language disorder
• Language development
• Neurobiological mechanisms

• Child
• Humans
• Language Development Disorders/etiology
• Language Development Disorders/psychology
• Language Development
• Risk Factors

• anxiety
• language
• maternal depression
• outcomes
• very preterm

• R01 NS094200 NINDS NIH HHS
• R01-NS096037 NINDS NIH HHS
• R01 NS096037 NINDS NIH HHS
• R01DC018734 NIDCD NIH HHS
• R01 DC018734 NIDCD NIH HHS
• UL1 TR001425 NCATS NIH HHS

• FFR
• Myelination
• Preterm infants
• Speech
• Synaptogenesis

• Infant
• Child
• Infant, Newborn
• Humans
• Infant, Premature/physiology
• Speech
• Language Development
• Language
• Auditory Perception

• Communication profiles
• Expressive language skills
• Language delay
• Late talkers
• Low-risk preterm birth
• Receptive language skills

• Children
• Story retelling test
• intelligibility
• oral-motor
• preterm
• single word
• speech sound production

• Brain
• Gestational diabetes
• Language impairment
• Offspring
• Preeclampsia
• Preterm delivery

• Pregnancy
• Infant, Newborn
• Female
• Humans
• Child
• Diabetes, Gestational
• Pre-Eclampsia
• Mothers
• Premature Birth
• Pregnancy Complications
• Language Development Disorders

• Down syndrome
• early predictors
• impairments
• language
• systematic review

• European Regional Development Fund
• Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

• Developmental trajectories
• Influencing factors
• Prediction
• Preterm birth

Young children use gestures to practice communicative functions that foster their receptive and expressive linguistic skills. Studies investigating the use of gestures by late talkers are limited. This study aimed to investigate the use of gestures and gesture–word combinations and their associations with word comprehension and word and sentence production in late talkers. A further purpose was to examine whether a set of individual and environmental factors accounted for interindividual differences in late talkers’ gesture and gesture–word production. Sixty-one late talkers, including 35 full-term and 26 low-risk preterm children, participated in the study. Parents filled out the Italian short forms of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB–CDI), “Gesture and Words” and “Words and Sentences” when their children were 30-months-old, and they were then invited to participate in a book-sharing session with their child. Children’s gestures and words produced during the book-sharing session were transcribed and coded into CHAT of CHILDES and analyzed with CLAN. Types of spontaneous gestures (pointing and representational gestures) and gesture–word combinations (complementary, equivalent, and supplementary) were coded. Measures of word tokens and MLU were also computed. Correlational analyses documented that children’s use of gesture–word combinations, particularly complementary and supplementary forms, in the book-sharing session was positively associated with linguistic skills both observed during the session (word tokens and MLU) and reported by parents (word comprehension, word production, and sentence production at the MB–CDI). Concerning individual factors, male gender was negatively associated with gesture and gesture–word use, as well as with MB–CDI action/gesture production. In contrast, having a low-risk preterm condition and being later-born were positively associated with the use of gestures and pointing gestures, and having a family history of language and/or learning disorders was positively associated with the use of representational gestures. Furthermore, a low-risk preterm status and a higher cognitive score were positively associated with gesture–word combinations, particularly complementary and supplementary types. With regard to environmental factors, older parental age was negatively associated with late talkers’ use of gestures and pointing gestures. Interindividual differences in late talkers’ gesture and gesture–word production were thus related to several intertwined individual and environmental factors. Among late talkers, use of gestures and gesture–word combinations represents a point of strength promoting receptive and expressive language acquisition.

• gesture–word combinations
• language delay
• late talkers
• low-risk preterm birth
• pointing
• representational gestures
• risk and protective factors

• Child
• Child, Preschool
• Gestures
• Humans
• Infant, Newborn
• Language
• Language Development
• Language Development Disorders
• Linguistics
• Male

Several studies have testified to the importance of a responsive linguistic input for children’s language acquisition and development. In particular, maternal use of expansions, imitations, interpretations, and labels has been shown to promote both children’s language comprehension and production. From this perspective, the present study examined the semantically contingent linguistic input addressed to very preterm children’s comparing it to that directed to full-term children observed during a semi-structured play session when the children were 24 months of age. The relationships between maternal contingent utterances and children’s communicative repertoires were also investigated. The main results showed that mothers of full-term children produced a higher proportion of semantically contingent utterances than those of very preterm children; moreover, this variable was associated with children’s more advanced communicative-linguistic outcomes. Overall, this study supports the interdependence between mothers’ use of certain linguistic strategies and children’s communicative-linguistic repertoire, extending this evidence to children born very preterm and suggesting the importance of considering the semantic contingency aspect of child-directed speech to support the communicative and linguistic development of these children.

• child-directed speech
• language development
• maternal semantically contingent input
• responsiveness
• very preterm children

Several qualitative and quantitative features of parental speech input support children’s language development and may play a critical role in improving such process in late talkers. Parent-implemented interventions targeting late-talkers have been developed to promote children’s language outcomes by enhancing their linguistic environment, i.e., parental speech input. This study investigated the effect of a parent-implemented intervention in increasing late talkers’ expressive skills through modifications in structural and functional features of parental speech input. Forty-six thirty-one-month-old late talkers differing in their birth condition (either low-risk preterm or full-term) participated in the study with a parent; 24 parent-child dyads received a parent-implemented intervention centered on dialogic reading and focused stimulation techniques, whereas the other 22 dyads constituted the control group. At pre- and post-intervention, dyads took part in a parent-child shared book-reading session and both parental and child’s speech measures were collected and examined. Results showed that the intervention positively affected parents’ use of responses and expansions of children’s verbal initiatives, as well as the parental amount of talking over reading, whereas no structural features of parental input resulted modified. Mediation analyses pointed out that the intervention indirectly enhanced late-talkers’ use of verbal types and tokens through changes in parental use of expansions and amount of talking over reading. As birth status was entered as a covariate in the analysis, these findings can be extended to children with different gestational age. We conclude that the parent-implemented intervention was effective in supporting late-talkers’ gains in language development as a cascade result of the improvements in parental contingency and dialogic reading abilities. These promising findings suggest to examine not only children and parental outcomes but also the intervention mechanisms promoting changes in late-talkers’ language development as a clearer view on such process can inform the development of feasible, ecological and effective programs.

• child-directed speech
• expressive language delay
• late-talkers
• parent-implemented intervention
• preterm birth

• Language disorder
• Longitudinal outcomes
• Neurodevelopment
• Parent-report questionnaire
• Prematurity
• Validity

• Comprehension
• Humans
• Infant
• Infant, Newborn
• Language
• Language Development
• Motor Skills
• Vocabulary

• assessment
• early language development
• literacy skills
• longitudinal follow-up
• prematurely born children
• regional cohort study
• very low birth weight
• very preterm

• age of assessment
• developmental language disorder
• diagnostic tools
• early predictors
• evidence-based medicine
• language delay
• late talkers
• screening tools

Language delay (LD) and its relationship with later language impairment in preterm children is a topic of major concern. Previous studies comparing LD in preterm (PT) and full-term (FT) children were mainly carried out with samples of extremely preterm and very preterm children (sometimes with additional medical problems). Very few of them were longitudinal studies, which is essential to understand developmental relationships between LD and later language impairment. In this study, we compare the prevalence of LD in low-risk preterm children to that of FT children in a longitudinal design ranging from 10 to 60 months of age. We also analyze which variables are related to a higher risk of LD at 22, 30 and 60 months of age. Different language tests were administered to three groups of preterm children of different gestational ages and to one group of full-term children from the ages of 10 to 60 months. ANOVA comparisons between groups and logistic regression analyses to identify possible predictors of language delay at 22, 30 and 60 months of age were performed. The results found indicate that there were practically no differences between gestational age groups. Healthy PT children, therefore, do not have, in general terms, a higher risk of language delay than FT children. Previous language delay and cognitive delay are the strongest and longest-lasting predictors of later language impairment. Other factors, such as a scarce use of gestures at 10 months or male gender, affect early LD at 22 months of age, although their effect disappears as children grow older. Low maternal education appears to have a late effect. Gestational age does not have any significant effect on the appearance of LD.

• language delay
• language development
• predictive factors
• preterm children

• Attention
• Katona's neurohabilitation
• MRI
• Perinatal brain damage
• Perinatal risk factors
• Prenatal risk factors
• Preterm

• Birth weight
• Mismatch response
• Perinatal risk factors
• Preterm infants
• Word stress perception

• Adult
• Birth Weight
• Female
• Gestational Age
• Humans
• Infant
• Infant, Newborn
• Infant, Premature
• Language Development
• Pregnancy

•

Maturation of specific WM tracts in preterm individuals differs from those of term controls.

Relative to full-term infants, very preterm infants exhibit disrupted white matter (WM) maturation and problems related to development, including motor, cognitive, social-emotional, and receptive and expressive language processing.

The present study aimed to determine whether regional abnormalities in the WM microstructure of very preterm infants, as defined relative to those of full-term infants at a near-term age, are associated with neurodevelopmental outcomes at the age of 18–22 months.

We prospectively enrolled 89 very preterm infants (birth weight < 1500 g) and 43 normal full-term control infants born between 2016 and 2018. All infants underwent a structural brain magnetic resonance imaging scan at near-term age. The diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metrics of the whole-brain WM tracts were extracted based on the neonatal probabilistic WM pathway. The elastic net logistic regression model was used to identify altered WM tracts in the preterm brain. We evaluated the associations between the altered WM microstructure at near-term age and motor, cognitive, social-emotional, and receptive and expressive language developments at 18–22 months of age, as measured using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, Third Edition.

We found that the elastic net logistic regression model could classify preterm and full-term neonates with an accuracy of 87.9% (corrected p < 0.008) using the DTI metrics in the pathway of interest with a 10% threshold level. The fractional anisotropy (FA) values of the body and splenium of the corpus callosum, middle cerebellar peduncle, left and right uncinate fasciculi, and right portion of the pathway between the premotor and primary motor cortices (premotor-PMC), as well as the mean axial diffusivity (AD) values of the left cingulum, were identified as contributive features for classification. Increased adjusted AD values in the left cingulum pathway were significantly correlated with language scores after false discovery rate (FDR) correction (r = 0.217, p = 0.043). The expressive language and social-emotional composite scores showed a significant positive correlation with the AD values in the left cingulum pathway (r = 0.226 [p = 0.036] and r = 0.31 [p = 0.003], respectively) after FDR correction.

Our approach suggests that the cingulum pathways of very preterm infants differ from those of full-term infants and significantly contribute to the prediction of the subsequent development of the language and social-emotional domains. This finding could improve our understanding of how specific neural substrates influence neurodevelopment at later ages, and individual risk prediction, thus helping to inform early intervention strategies that address developmental delay.

• Bayley scales
• Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)
• Elastic net logistic regression model
• Very preterm infants
• White matter (WM)

• MB-CDI
• expressive language delay
• late talkers
• low-risk preterm children
• parent-implemented intervention

• Child
• Female
• Humans
• Infant, Newborn
• Language Development Disorders/therapy
• Reading

• Bayley language score
• Corrected age
• Expressive vocabulary
• Language development
• MacArthur–Bates CDI
• Very preterm

• MB-CDI
• child spontaneous speech
• child-directed speech
• early predictors
• language delay
• late talkers
• parent–child book sharing
• preterm birth

Background: Delays in learning skills have been extensively reported for very preterm children. However, few studies have examined academic achievement profiles in Italian preterm children as a function of their neonatal immaturity. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed that included 82 healthy Italian children born very and extremely preterm (without major neurosensory outcomes; IQ ≥85). Children were evaluated for academic and neurocognitive performances at the second cycle of primary school. Results: Healthy preterm children showed on average academic and neurocognitive profiles that did not differ according to gestational age. Impairment was seen to one or more learning domains in 14.6% of the healthy preterm children. Conclusions: Italian children born very and extremely preterm without major neurosensory damage and/or cognitive delay showed on average learning and neurocognitive profiles within the normal range, regardless of gestational age. Nevertheless, they showed higher proportions of learning impairment than a normative Italian population during their final years of primary school. Healthcare providers should be aware of this result, and long-term surveillance should be organized to promptly identify those children who are in need of therapeutic intervention.

• clinical neurodevelopment follow-up in preterm children
• healthy preterm
• learning abilities
• learning impairment
• neurocognitive profile
• very preterm

• Child
• Cognition Disorders
• Cross-Sectional Studies
• Humans
• Infant, Newborn
• Intelligence
• Italy/epidemiology
• Learning Disabilities
• Male
• Premature Birth
• Schools

• SES
• phonetics
• phonological acquisition
• phonotactics
• preterm infants
• prosody
• speech perception

• Assisted reproductive technologies
• Birth weight
• Gestational age
• Language
• Sex
• Singleton birth
• Speech

• Initiating joint attention
• Prematurity
• Responding to joint attention

• Child Development
• Child, Preschool
• Cognition
• Female
• Humans
• Infant
• Infant, Newborn
• Infant, Premature
• Language
• Language Development
• Pregnancy
• Premature Birth

• P30 HD002528 NICHD NIH HHS
• R01 DC003311 NIDCD NIH HHS

• Follow-up
• Guidelines
• Language
• Neurodevelopment
• Prematurity
• School-age

• extremely low birth weight
• infant outcome
• maternal anxiety
• trajectories of development
• very low birth weight

Young children’s healthy development depends on nurturing care, which ensures health, nutrition, responsive caregiving, safety and security, and early learning. Infancy and childhood are characterized by rapid growth and development, and these two factors contribute largely to determining health status and well-being across the lifespan. Identification of modifiable risk factors and prognostic factors during the critical periods of life will contribute to the development of effective prevention and intervention strategies.

The NASCITA (NAscere e creSCere in ITAlia) study was created to evaluate physical, cognitive, and psychological development, health status and health resource utilization during the first six years of life in a cohort of newborns, and to evaluate potential associated factors.

NASCITA is an ongoing, dynamic, prospective, population-based birth cohort study of an expected number of more than 5000 newborns who will be recruited in 22 national geographic clusters starting in 2019. It was designed to follow children from birth to school entry age for a wide range of determinants, disorders, and diseases. Recruitment of the newborns (and their parents) will take place during the first routine well-child visit, which takes place at the office of the pediatrician assigned to them by the local health unit of residence, and which is scheduled for all newborns born in Italy within the first 45 days of their life.

Data will be web-based and collected by the family pediatricians during each of the 7 standard well-child visits scheduled for all children during their first 6 years of life. Information on every contact with the enrolled children in addition to these prescheduled visits will be also recorded.

The NASCITA cohort study provides a framework in which children are followed from birth to six-years of age. NASCITA will broaden our understanding of the contribution of early-life factors to infant and child health and development. NASCITA provides opportunities to initiate new studies, also experimental ones, in parts of the cohort, and will contribute relevant information on determinants and health outcomes to policy and decision makers. Cohort details can be found on https://coortenascita.marionegri.it.

Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT03894566.

Ethics committee approval: 6 February 2019, Verbale N 59.

• Child
• Clinical trial protocol [publication type]
• Cohort studies
• Health
• Infant
• Infant, newborn
• Public health

• child health
• perinatal
• social inequalities

• Child, Preschool
• Cohort Studies
• Educational Status
• Europe
• Female
• Gestational Age
• Humans
• Infant, Extremely Premature
• Infant, Newborn
• Language Development
• Male
• Mothers/psychology
• Population Surveillance
• Pregnancy
• Socioeconomic Factors

• Endogenous generators
• Impact of prematurity
• Maturation process
• Neural network
• Neurodevelopment
• Neurodevelopmental disorders
• Prematurity

• Brain
• Cognition
• Humans
• Infant, Low Birth Weight
• Infant, Newborn
• Infant, Premature, Diseases

• Cognition
• Extremely preterm children
• Language development
• Preschool age

• Child, Preschool
• Comprehension/physiology
• Female
• Humans
• Infant, Extremely Premature/physiology
• Language Development
• Language Development Disorders/physiopathology
• Male
• Psycholinguistics

Infants with an older sibling with an Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis (Sibs ASD) are at high risk for language delay (LD) as well as infants born preterm, especially those with an extremely low gestational age (ELGA, GA ≤ 28 weeks). Gestures play a crucial role in language development and delays in gesture production may have negative cascading effects on it. The present exploratory study examined gesture production in 18-month-old infants with different underlying risks for LD. Seventy monolingual United States infants (41 Sibs ASD with no eventual ASD diagnosis and 29 infants with a typically developing older sibling -Sibs TD) and 40 monolingual Italian infants (20 ELGA without major cerebral damages, congenital malformations or sensory impairments and 20 full-term - FT infants, GA ≥ 37 weeks) were included. Both groups were followed longitudinally from 18 to 24, 30, and 36 months (corrected for ELGA infants). A 30-minute mother-infant play session with age-appropriate toys was video recorded at 18 months of age. Deictic (requesting, pointing, showing and giving), conventional, and representational gestures spontaneously produced by infants were coded; rate per 10 min was calculated. LD was defined as a score ≤10th percentile on the American English or Italian version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI on at least two time points between 18 and 36 months. Fifteen Sibs ASD and 9 ELGA infants were identified as infants with LD. Sibs ASD-LD and Sibs ASD-no LD produced fewer pointing gestures compared to Sibs TD (p = 0.038; p = 0.004); ELGA-LD infants produced significantly fewer pointing gestures than ELGA-no LD (p = 0.024) and FT (p = 0.006) infants. Low rates of pointing at 18 months are a marker of LD in Sibs ASD and ELGA infants. The potential implications of reduced pointing production and characteristics of different populations at risk for LD should be considered for understanding the emergence of LD.

• early indexes of language delay
• extremely preterm infants
• gestures
• infants at risk for ASD
• pointing

• development
• follow-up
• language
• outcome
• preterm

• Cohort Studies
• Developmental Disabilities/epidemiology
• Female
• France
• Gestational Age
• Humans
• Infant, Newborn
• Infant, Premature
• Language Disorders/epidemiology
• Male
• Risk Factors