Expressive and Receptive Language Characteristics in Three-Year-Old Preterm Children with Extremely Low Birth Weight

Abstract

According to the analysis of the language characteristics, the logopedic approach to 3-year-old children born with ELBW must be focused on receptive (comprehension of 'wh'-questions, passive sentences, inferencing skills and spatial prepositions) and expressive (defining words, expressing semantic relations) morphosyntactic abilities and linguistic conceptualization. These communication disorders appear unrelated to neurological or sensorial impairments, but can be partly explained by a decreased general mental functioning.