ABSTRACT

Determining the effects of prematurity on language development is a complex phenomenon. This is especially true when one considers that many children live in multilingual and multicultural environments. When preparing for an evaluation, speech-language pathologists must use assessment tools that allow them to objectively determine the communication abilities of their client; the selection of assessment tools is a critical step in this evaluation process. However, in Official Minority Language Communities (OMLC), this process is made more difficult by the lack of standardized assessment tools and regional norms. At present, no study has examined the linguistic competencies of bilingual children born prematurely and taken into consideration the implication of residing in a minority language community. Using a formal evaluation battery comprised of French and English language tests, this study examined the linguistic knowledge, linguistic processing and working memory of three groups of premature children having average non-verbal language skills: monolingual children speaking English (ENG) (n=5, X=6.6 years; SD=1.1), bilingual children whose dominant language was French (FD) (n=5, X=9.3 years; SD=0.99), and bilingual children whose dominant language was English (ED) (n=3, X=8.1 years; SD=1.5). Results showed that regardless of language dominance, birth weight and degree of prematurity, participants’ scores fell within the average range on simple language tasks, or tasks measuring linguistic knowledge. However, most children experienced difficulties with complex language tasks measuring linguistic processing, as well as working memory. More bilinguals then monolinguals were identified as having a PLI. Also, of those identified, only one participant was identified as having language delays in the preschool period, demonstrating that the difficulties observed in this study developed at a later stage. Long-term follow-up is necessary in order to determine if these weaknesses are maintained, or if they impact academic success.