Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2020 Apr;61(4):447-458. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13128. Epub 2019 Nov 11.
Term infants learn word-object relations in their first year during multisensory interactions with caregivers. Although preterm infants often experience language delays, little is known about how caregivers contribute to their early word-object learning. The present longitudinal study compared maternal naming and word learning in these infant groups.
Forty moderately preterm and 40 term infants participated at 6-9 and 12 months with their mothers. At each visit, mothers named two novel objects during play, and infants' learning was assessed using dynamic displays of the familiar and novel (mismatched) word-object relations. Infants' general cognitive, language, and motoric abilities were evaluated. Maternal multisensory naming was coded for synchrony between the target words and object motions and other naming styles.
During play, although overall maternal naming-style was similar across infant groups within visits, naming frequency increased to term but not preterm infants, from visit 1 to 2. On the test at visit 1, although the term infants' looked equally to novel and familiar word-object relations, their looking to the novel relations correlated positively with maternal synchrony use but inversely with naming frequency. At visit 2, term infants looked longer to the novel relations. In contrast, preterm infants showed no looking preference at either visit. Neither was their word-object learning correlated with maternal naming. Their cognition, language, and motor scores were attenuated when compared to term infants on the Bayley-III but not their MCDI vocabulary.
Less adaptive maternal naming and delayed word mapping in moderately preterm infants underscore a critical need for multisensory language intervention prior to first-word onset to alleviate its cascading effects on later language.
足月婴儿在与照顾者的多感官互动中，在第一年学习单词-物体关系。尽管早产儿经常经历语言延迟，但对于照顾者如何帮助他们早期学习单词-物体关系知之甚少。本纵向研究比较了这两组婴儿的母亲命名和单词学习能力。
40 名中度早产儿和 40 名足月婴儿在 6-9 个月和 12 个月时与母亲一起参加了研究。在每次访问中，母亲在游戏中命名两个新物体，然后使用熟悉和新（不匹配）单词-物体关系的动态显示评估婴儿的学习情况。评估婴儿的一般认知、语言和运动能力。对母亲的多感官命名进行编码，以评估目标词与物体运动之间的同步性以及其他命名风格。
在游戏中，尽管在各次访问中，婴儿组内的整体母亲命名风格相似，但命名频率在足月婴儿中从第一次访问增加到第二次访问，而在早产儿中没有增加。在第一次访问的测试中，尽管足月婴儿对新的和熟悉的单词-物体关系的注视程度相同，但他们对新关系的注视与母亲的同步使用呈正相关，与命名频率呈负相关。在第二次访问时，足月婴儿对新关系注视时间更长。相比之下，早产儿在两次访问中均未表现出注视偏好。他们的单词-物体学习也与母亲的命名无关。与足月婴儿相比，他们的贝利 III 认知、语言和运动评分较低，但他们的 MCDI 词汇评分没有差异。
中度早产儿适应性较差的母亲命名和延迟的单词映射强调了在第一语言出现之前进行多感官语言干预的迫切需要，以减轻其对后期语言的级联效应。
