Probing the Impact of Prematurity on Segmentation Abilities in the Context of Bilingualism.

Infants born prematurely are at a high risk of developing linguistic deficits. In the current study, we compare how full-term and healthy preterm infants without neuro-sensorial impairments segment words from fluent speech, an ability crucial for lexical acquisition. While early word segmentation abilities have been found in monolingual infants, we test here whether it is also the case for French-dominant bilingual infants with varying non-dominant languages.

Visual scanning of a talking face in preterm and full-term infants.

Preterm birth (< 37 gestational weeks) is associated with long-term risks for health and neurodevelopment, but recently, studies have also started exploring how preterm birth affects early language development in the 1st year of life. Because the timing and quality of auditory and visual input is very different for preterm versus full-term infants, audiovisual speech perception in early development may be particularly sensitive to preterm birth. We tested extremely preterm to late preterm infants at 8 months postnatal age (28 to 36 weeks of gestation), as well as 2 full-term comparison groups with similar postnatal (8 months) and maturational (6 months) ages, on visual scanning of a video showing a French-English bilingual woman speaking in the infants' native language (French) and a nonnative language (English).

[Language acquisition in preterm infants during the first year of life].

Previous studies have shown that preterm children are at a higher risk for cognitive and language delays than full-term children. Most of these studies have concentrated on the effects of prematurity during the preschool or school years, while the effect of preterm birth on the early development of language, much of which occurs during the first year of life, remains very little explored. This article focuses on this crucial period and reviews the studies that have explored early phonological and lexical development in preterm infants.