Babbling in extremely premature infants at 12 months corrected age.

Babbling is an important precursor to speech in infancy, and deviations from the typical babbling development can predict later difficulties in speech, language, and communication. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate babbling and early speech in Swedish extremely premature infants. Samples of babbling were collected from 20 extremely premature infants (EPT group) at the corrected age of 12 months. Data collection was home-based and consisted of an audio-video recording of each infant playing with a parent. Presence of canonical babbling (CB), and three oral stop variables distinctive of typical babbling, and consonant inventory were assessed. The assessment was performed during a standardised observation of babbling. Data from the EPT group were compared to previously collected data of a reference group of 20 10-month-old infants without known medical diagnoses. The results showed that the EPT group had a lower proportion of infants producing CB, and that they used a significantly smaller consonant inventory compared to the reference group. Although not statistically significant, oral stops were less frequently found in the EPT group. The findings of a restricted consonant inventory and low proportion of CB in the EPT group are not surprising considering that the group has been found to be at risk of speech and language delay in toddlerhood. Still, further research is needed to explore whether babbling at 12 months can predict speech and language skills at an older age in extremely premature infants.

Asking parents about babbling at 10 months produced valid answers but did not predict language screening result 2 years later.

AIM: We evaluated the concurrent and predictive validity of questions to parents of 10-month-old children about babbling. METHODS: Children with at least one native Swedish-speaking parent were eligible for inclusion in this prospective longitudinal study. The parents were asked three questions about babbling at a routine healthcare visit. If parents reported a lack of canonical babbling (CB), children were assessed by a speech and language pathologist to evaluate the questions' concurrent validity. We then examined whether the babbling questions predicted which children would fail the routine language screening at 2.5/3 years. RESULTS: Fifteen of the 1126 children lacked CB according to the parent responses and the expert assessment confirmed 12 of these cases, providing a concurrent validity of 80%. The sensitivity to predict routine language screening was 8% (95% confidence interval 3-17), and the positive predictive value was 40% (95% confidence interval 20%-65%). However, only six of the children lacking CB at 10 months were among the 71 children who failed later language screening. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that the babbling questions could be included in the 10-month surveillance at the child health services as valid measures of babbling development, but they cannot predict language screening result at 2.5/3 years.

Parents' contingent responses in communication with 10-month-old children in a clinical group with typical or late babbling.

Parental responsive behaviour in communication has a positive effect on child speech and language development. Absence of canonical babbling (CB) in 10-month-old infants is considered a risk factor for developmental difficulties, yet little is known about parental responsiveness in this group of children. The purpose of the current study was to examine proportion and type of parental responsive utterances after CB and vocalization utterances respectively in a clinical group of children with otitis media with effusion, with or without cleft palate. Audio-video recordings of interactions in free play situations with 22 parents and their 10-month-old infants were used, where 15 infants had reached the CB stage and 7 infants had not. Fifty consecutive child utterances were annotated and categorized as vocalization utterance or CB utterance. The parent's following contingent response was annotated and labelled as acknowledgements, follow-in comments, imitations/expansions or directives. The Average intra-judge agreement was 90%, and the average inter-judger agreement was 84%. There was no significant difference in proportion contingent responses after vocalizations and CB, neither when considering all child utterances nor the child's babbling stage. However, imitations/expansions tended to be more common after CB in the typical babbling group, whereas acknowledgements were more common after CB in the late babbling group. Our findings imply that responsiveness is a supportive strategy that is not fully used by parents of children with late babbling. Implications for further research as well as parent-directed intervention for children in clinical groups with late babbling are suggested.

Observation is a valid way of assessing common variables in typical babbling and identifies infants who need further support.

AIM: It is important to identify speech and language difficulties in children as early as possible. This study investigated the validity of observing babbling structure and consonant articulation. METHODS: We focused on the language capabilities of children, with and without cleft palates, at 12 months of age (n = 29) and 18 months of age (n = 38), comparing observations made by speech and language pathologists on babbling structure and consonant articulation to audio recordings phonetically transcribed by experts blinded to the aim of the study. Descriptive cross-tabs, sensitivity, specificity and predictive values were analysed to investigate the validity of agreement between the methods. RESULTS: We found high mean agreement between the two methods (94%) and within the observation (100%) and transcription (88.5%) teams when it came to canonical babbling, high-pressure/oral stop consonants and anterior placement of bilabial and dental/alveolar consonants. The observations had high specificity and negative predictive values (0.90-1) at both ages, with low to moderate sensitivity (0-0.86). However, there was low agreement, between and within the groups, on the number of consonant types and the unproven predictive variable glottal place of articulation. CONCLUSION: Previously suggested predictive measures of babbling were shown to be valid and observation is a reliable method of identifying children who need further support.