Browsing by Author "Kämäräinen, Maiju"

The tiniest prematurely born children have several diseases that require treatment during the neonatal period. Also after this period the tiniest prematurely born children are at the risk of developing different kinds of neurological conditions and chronic diseases. Earlier studies have shown that premature birth and low gestational age have long-term effects on child’s language development. The aim of this study is to gather information about the lexical development of the tiniest prematurely born children under the age of three. Prematurity can be defined either by gestational age or by birth weight. Hence, the keywords were extremely preterm and extremely low birth weight when proceeding the search. Also the terms lexical development and language development were used. Three databases were used to gather the material. Eventually five articles from the years 2006–2015 were chosen. There were significant differences between the expressive and receptive lexical skills of the tiniest prematurely born children and the children born full-term. The size of the lexicon of the tiniest prematurely born children was significantly smaller than the lexicon of the children born full-term. Concerning the confounding factors, the biological factors had a greater effect on the lexical development than social factors. Especially gestational age had a significant link to the lexical development. More research is needed to understand the early expressive and receptive lexicon of the tiniest prematurely born children. In the future researchers should focus on individual trajectories and the connection between eating difficulties in early childhood and later language development. Also the language development of the tiniest prematurely born bilingual children should be studied more.