Parental Book-Reading to Preterm Born Infants in NICU: The Effects on Language Development in the First Two Years.

Erica Neri,Augusto Biasini,Marcello Stella,Leonardo De Pascalis,Federica Genova,Francesca Agostini,Elena Trombini

doi:10.3390/ijerph182111361

Abstract

Background: After preterm birth, infants are at high risk for delays in language development. A promising intervention to reduce this risk is represented by the exposure to parental voices through book-reading in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU). This study investigated the possible advantages of book-reading to preterm neonates during their NICU stay on their subsequent language development. Methods: 100 families of preterm infants were recruited. The parents of 55 preterm infants (Reading Group) received a colored picture-book on NICU admission and were supported to read to their neonate as often as possible and to continue after hospital discharge. Forty-five infants (Control Group) were recruited before the beginning of the intervention. Infant language development was assessed with the Hearing and Language quotients of the Griffith Mental Development Scale at the corrected ages of 3, 6, 9, 12, 18 and 24 months. Results: Regardless of group membership, Hearing and Language mean quotients decreased between 9 and 18 months; nevertheless, this decrease was considerably reduced in the Reading group, compared to the Control Group. Conclusions: Reading in NICUs represents a suitable intervention that could positively influence language development and parent-infant relationships in preterm children. The study findings support its implementation as a preventive measure.

Highlights

Preterm birth is defined as a birth that occurs before the end of 37th gestational week [1] and it represents one of the leading causes of infant mortality and disability [2,3].The consequences of premature birth have been found to persist in the long-term, and negatively influence several areas of child development [4,5,6,7]
Verbalizations, and discrimination between native and non-native stimuli [11,18,19]. These difficulties may be further exacerbated by severe prematurity, as in the case of infants born with a birth weight under 1500 g (Very Low Birth weight-VLBW; [8,20])
The present study investigated the possible benefits of a book-reading intervention aimed at preterm infants, during their stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), on their later language development

Summary

Introduction

Preterm birth is defined as a birth that occurs before the end of 37th gestational week [1] and it represents one of the leading causes of infant mortality and disability [2,3].The consequences of premature birth have been found to persist in the long-term, and negatively influence several areas of child development [4,5,6,7]. Previous literature has underlined impairments in language development [8,9,10] where, compared to full-term infants, those born preterm showed decreased word production [11,12], shorter utterances [13,14], and weaker grammatical [15,16] and reading skills [17]. While these delays were mainly observed in school-aged individuals, early difficulties may be found during the first months of life, such as lower production of syllables, imitation of adults’.

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