engleski

Preverbal communication in children with perinatal hypoxia

Communication is central to the human experience and the emergence of communication skills is an important part of infant development. Infants, however, do not develop communication skills in isolation. Biological, environmental, socio-economic and cultural factors all influence on infant`s communication development. Preverbal communication is so essential because it consists of fast and rich sequences bearing the character of learning situations. Many researches have shown that there is a continuity in the process by which children communicate with others prelinguistically and linguistically. This is the reason why it is important to study and follow the development of communication skills in children at neurodevelopmental risk. Delays in communication and language development can often be observed during the 1st year of a child’ s life, but diagnosis and subsequent intervention, however, typically occurs much later. During that "empty"period, the disabling effects of a communication delay may have an impact on overall cognitive, language and social development. The primary accent of this research is on features of preverbal communication in children at neurodevelopmental risk who suffered perinataly hypoxia and were hypotrophic at birth. Subjects were 8 premature newborns with gestational age from 27 to 35 weeks (median 32 weeks) and birth weight from 1160 to 2800 g (median 1375 g). SNAP score (Score for Acute Neonatal Physiology) ranged from 5 to13 (median 8, 5). All infants were suffering from imminent intrauterine hypoxia (at least absence of diastole in umbilical artery) and were included in neuropediatric follow-up since birth. At the age of 12 months, they underwent thorough assesment done by psychologist and speech and language pathologist. The assesment was focued on features of following developmental measures and milestones: (1) mental and psychomotor development indexes (Bayley MDI and PDI) (2) the appearance and characterization of early vocalization and babbling (3) the appearance of first word (4) understanding of simple phrases and single words (4) age-appropriate social skills (sharing, following and directing attention). The special emphasis is given to the processes of joint attention (or early phase of social cognition) because we assume that they are the rooth of the communality between prelinguistic and linguistic communication.

communication; prelinguistic development; language development; neurodevelopmental risk; hypoxia

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