title: Productive language of premature and physically handicapped two-year-olds.
abstract: Structural and functional features of the productive language of healthy and at-risk 2-yr-olds were compared. Subjects were normal, full-term toddlers (n = 15), toddlers with either cosmetic or orthopedic anomalies (n = 15), and premature toddlers (n = 15). Transcripts of the language of each child were compiled from 30-min videotapes of mother and child engaged in a variety of semistructured activities. Although premature and physically handicapped toddlers did not differ significantly from each other, both groups of medical risk toddlers were delayed in a variety of structural indices of their productive language. In comparison to normal children, they had a shorter MLU and upper bound, and a smaller vocabulary, including fewer verbs. On functional features of language usage, however, there were few differences between normal and high-risk toddlers. Results are discussed in the context of developmental and learning models that posit a relationship between maternal and child behavior.
mesh_terms: D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006233:Persons with Disabilities; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007234:Infant, Premature; D007804:Language Development; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D012306:Risk