Size and composition of the lexicon in prematurely born very-low-birth-weight and full-term Finnish children at two years of age

This paper focuses on the aspects of the lexicon in 66 prematurely born very-low-birth-weight and 87 full-term Finnish children at 2;0, studied using the Finnish version of the MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventory. The groups did not differ in vocabulary size. Furthermore, the female adva...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of child language 2007-05, Vol.34 (2), p.283-310
Main Authors: STOLT, SUVI, KLIPPI, ANU, LAUNONEN, KAISA, MUNCK, PETRIINA, LEHTONEN, LIISA, LAPINLEIMU, HELENA, HAATAJA, LEENA
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
At Risk Persons
Biological and medical sciences
Birth weight
Body Weight
Child
Child development
Child Language
Child, Preschool
Children
Comparative Analysis
Control Groups
Developmental psychology
Female
Females
Finland
Finnish language
Foreign Countries
Function words
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gender Differences
Grammar
Humans
Infant, Newborn
Infant, Premature
Infant, Very Low Birth Weight
Language Acquisition
Language Development
Language Skills
Lexicon
Linguistics
Male
Nouns
Oral Language
Premature birth
Premature Infants
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Verbal Behavior
Vocabulary
Vocabulary Development
Vocabulary size
Young Children
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Summary:This paper focuses on the aspects of the lexicon in 66 prematurely born very-low-birth-weight and 87 full-term Finnish children at 2;0, studied using the Finnish version of the MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventory. The groups did not differ in vocabulary size. Furthermore, the female advantage in vocabulary size was not seen in preterm children. The overall shapes of the trajectories for the main lexical categories as a function of vocabulary size were highly similar in both groups and followed those described in the literature. However, there were significant differences in the percentage of nouns and grammatical function words between the two groups. The results suggest that prematurity ‘cuts off’ the female advantage in vocabulary development. Furthermore, it also seems that there are differences between prematurely born and full-term children in the composition of the lexicon at 2;0. The findings support the universal sequence in the development of lexical categories.
ISSN:0305-0009
1469-7602
DOI:10.1017/S0305000906007902