Extensão média do enunciado em palavras (EME-P) de crianças com 4 e 5 anos nascidas pré-termo

Abstract

Several studies have shown that preterm birth can lead to abnormal neurological development that often leads to a compromise of processing and language development. Some studies also show that factors such as birth weight, parents' education and gender can significantly influence the language development of preterm infants. This work aims to verify whether children from very preterm birth to late preterm birth (28-36 weeks) present values of Mean Length of Utterance in words (MLU-w) lower than those considered in reference to the 4 and 5 years. We also intend to verify the group of premature children is the number of gestational weeks and birth weight influence the values of MLU-w and if there are differences conditioned by gender. Participated in this study 19 premature infants (9 boys and 10 girls) enrolled in kindergartens of the Greater Lisbon area. The speech of these children was recorded for 30 minutes and subsequently transcribed for ELAN 4.1.2 software to be properly analyzed. It was found that the values of MLU-w of preterm infants are lower than the reference values at 4 and 5 years. Both gestational age as birth weight correlated positively and significantly with the MLU-w. No differences conditioned by gender or by parental education were found.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Maria Emília Santos (Supervisor) & Joana Castelo Branco (Co-Supervisor)