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A new study suggests that premature babies have better language
skills by 18 months of age if they're exposed to more adult talk very
early in life.
For decades it's been known that older children
suffer speech and language delays when their exposure to adult speech is
limited. Researchers decided to see if the same thing applied to
preterm infants, who often have speech delays as toddlers.
In the study published in the medical journal Pediatrics, lead
author Dr. Betty Vohr of Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown
University and Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, R.I.,
explains that infants in neonatal intensive care units are regularly
exposed to the sounds of monitors and machines but not direct adult
speech.
[post_ads]She and her team studied 36 preterm babies weighing just
over 2 pounds in the NICU at Women & Infants Hospital. Researchers
recorded the sounds in the NICU for 16 hours by outfitting the babies
with vests that recorded and analyzed conversations and nearby
background noises. Recordings were made when the babies were 32 weeks
"postmenstrual age," which corresponds to 32 weeks of pregnancy, and
again at 36 weeks. When the babies were tested at 7 and 18 months after
birth, researchers found that babies exposed to just 100 additional
words per hour in early life demonstrated a measurable increase in
language skills.
According to a press release from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the publisher of the journal Pediatrics, "Every
increase by 100 adult words per hour during the recording at age 32
weeks resulted in a 2-point increase in language composite scores at 18
months and a 0.5-point increase in expressive communication scores."
"Parents
should be encouraged to talk to their preterm babies while in the NICU
to avoid risk of language delay," the AAP recommends.
Adding an
additional 100 words an hour is actually pretty simple. Singing songs,
repeating nursery rhymes, describing how your day was, discussing plans
for the future, and even talking about the weather can easily get that
number up. Family and friends can make soothing recordings for the baby
to listen to in the NICU.
Dr. Vohr said earlier research also
found that premature babies respond audibly to their mothers' presence.
"Our earlier study identified that extremely premature infants vocalize
(make sounds) eight weeks before their mother's due date and vocalize
more when their mothers are present in the NICU than when they are cared
for by NICU staff," she said.
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She reiterated that researchers have long known that premature babies need close contact to thrive. "Our
study demonstrates the powerful impact of parents visiting and talking
to their infants in the NICU on their developmental outcomes," Vohr
says.
Obviously, parents can have a difficult time spending all of
their time at the NICU, especially if they have older children to care
for. But with the discovery many years ago of the benefits of "kangaroo care"
(skin-to-skin contact with newborns) and now this study, parents of
preemies should make every effort to be present as much as possible.
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