Original ArticlesLanguage Trajectories of Children Born Very Preterm and Full Term from Early to Late Childhood
Section snippets
Methods
Children were part of a prospective longitudinal cohort study of 224 infants born very preterm (<30 weeks of gestation) or with a birthweight of <1250 g at the Royal Women's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia. Children were recruited at birth between July 2001 and December 2003. Children with genetic or congenital abnormalities associated with adverse development and children of non–English-speaking parents were ineligible. A group of 77 infants born full term (>37 weeks' gestation) were recruited
Determining Distinct Language Trajectories
In LGMM and subsequent analyses, 291 children were included as 10 children (very preterm, n = 8; full term, n = 2) were excluded owing to missing language scores at all 4 follow-up waves. Although the 4-class (intercept covariance) model had the best model fit indices (Table II), the smallest latent class included just 3 children (1% of the cohort). There are no criteria for the smallest number of people in a latent class, but model selection should be based on fit statistics as well as
Discussion
This study identified 5 developmental trajectories of language in very preterm and full term children. Most of the full term group (94%) exhibited favorable language development across childhood. The majority of children born very preterm demonstrated catch-up in their language functioning, and by 7 years of age most of the very preterm group (60%) had stable language trajectories that were similar to their full term peers. Of concern, however, are the remaining children born very preterm (40%)
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Supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Council (Centre for Research Excellence 1060733; Project grants 237117, 491209 & 1066555; Senior Research Fellowship [1081288 to P.A.]); US National Institutes of Health (HD058056); the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the Royal Children's Hospital Foundation; and the Victorian Government's Operational Infrastructure Support Program. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.