Table 3.
Language sample analysis outcomes.
| Variable | Preterm M (SD) |
Term born M (SD) |
Group differences (uncontrolled) |
Group differences (controlled) |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Magnitude coef. (CI) | p | Magnitude coef. (CI) | p | |||
| Volubility and linguistic fluency | ||||||
| Number of utterances | 101.26 (28.15) |
98.05 (26.23) |
3.12 [–5.16, 11.40] |
.46 | 3.65 [–4.85,12.15] |
.40 |
| Total number of completed words | 277.67 (106.18) |
311.26 (123.29) |
–33.52 [–68.46,1.42] |
.06 | –18.58 [–55.02, 17.86] |
.32 |
| Words per minute | 27.83 (10.77) |
31.17 (12.33) |
–3.35 [–6.86,0.17] |
.06 | –1.90 [–5.57, 1.76] |
.31 |
| Percent of intelligible and complete utterances | 82.57 (10.91) |
85.24 (10.52) |
–2.55 [–5.83, 0.72] |
.13 | –3.94 [–7.28, –0.61] |
.02 |
| Maze words as a percentage of total words | 4.34 (3.35) |
4.56 (4.27) |
–0.19 [–1.33, 0.96] |
.75 | –0.04 [–1.16, 1.09] |
.95 |
| Morphosyntactic complexity | ||||||
| Mean length of utterance in words | 2.81 (0.78) |
3.20 (0.80) |
–0.41 [–0.65, –0.16] |
.001 | –0.29 [–0.53, –0.05] |
.02 |
| Mean length of utterance in morphemes | 3.11 (0.85) |
3.48 (0.91) |
–0.39 [–0.66, –0.12] |
.01 | –0.28 [–0.56, 0.01] |
.04 |
| IPSyn total score | 60.90 (13.53) |
65.39 (12.05) |
–4.52 [–8.55, –0.51] |
.03 | –2.86 [–6.78, 1.05] |
.15 |
| IPSyn Noun Phrase subscale | 17.44 (2.81) |
18.40 (2.48) |
–0.99 [–1.80, –0.17] |
.02 | –0.58 [–1.40, 0.24] |
.16 |
| IPSyn Verb Phrase subscale | 20.17 (5.16) |
21.14 (5.24) |
–1.07 [–2.73, 0.58] |
.20 | –0.39 [–2.03, 1.25] |
.64 |
| IPSyn Question/Negation subscale | 7.54 (7.49) |
7.49 (3.71) |
0.01 [–1.62, 1.64] |
.99 | 0.59 [–1.31, 2.49] |
.54 |
| IPSyn Sentence Structures subscale | 16.26 (4.62) |
18.24 (3.89) |
–1.97 [–3.26, –0.69] |
.003 | –1.81 [–3.10, –0.52] |
.01 |
| Lexical variety | ||||||
| Total number of words | 217.78 (88.16) |
251.88 (105.16) |
–33.96 [–63.35, –4.56] |
.02 | –27.57 [–58.69, 3.56] |
.08 |
| Number of different word roots | 80.63 (23.43) |
91.85 (26.37) |
–11.29 [–18.94, –3.63] |
.004 | –10.04 [–17.93, –2.14] |
.01 |
| Number of nouns | 58.70 (26.96) |
61.82 (27.15) |
–3.53 [–12.08, 5.02] |
.42 | –3.09 [–12.14, 5.96] |
.50 |
| Number of verbs | 35.41 (17.89) |
41.65 (22.18) |
–6.25 [–12.41, –0.10] |
.046 | –5.33 [–11.46, 0.81] |
.09 |
| Number of adjectives | 7.38 (6.30) |
8.60 (6.00) |
–1.26 [–3.12, 0.60] |
.18 | –1.02 [–2.95, 0.92] |
.30 |
| Number of prepositions | 10.84 (7.88) |
13.38 (7.57) |
–2.39 [–4.69, –0.09] |
.04 | –2.25 [–4.74, 0.23] |
.08 |
Note. CI = 95% confidence interval; coef. = regression coefficient; IPSyn = Index of Productive Syntax.