
“Very Pre-Term” Delivery and the Impact on Speech Sound Production
“Very Pre-Term” Delivery and the Impact on Speech Sound Production According to an article published in the ASHA Wire, very preterm children (those delivered earlier than 32 weeks gestation) are reported to be at greater risk of speech and language delays through school age. In a study of 63 preterm children, speech sound development was found to be abnormal in 49% of study participants at 2 years of age and in 19% of participants by 4 years of age. Early speech production or the development of acquired consonants by 2 years of age, was highly predictive of intelligibility in single words and sentences by age four. Results suggest that compared to full term infants, an alarmingly high proportion of “Very