Language development of premature children followed up in an outpatient clinic: a preliminary study.

Only 61 children from a single hospital clinic were assessed, and the authors state the results cannot be generalised beyond that service. The children ranged from 13 to 65 months of age and the sample was too small to group them into similar age bands, so children at very different stages of language development were analysed together. Language was scored with raw scores rather than age-standardised scores, because the test only provides standard scores from 36 months of chronological age; a raw score partly reflects how old the child is. Each child was assessed once, so the design cannot show cause and effect between prematurity, birth factors and language development. The study did not classify the severity of any language impairment, which the authors suggest may be why their results did not match earlier studies. With a sample this small, non-significant results cannot rule out real associations between these factors and language.

The paper's only declaration is funding, from two Brazilian government research bodies: Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES, funding code 001) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq, PIBIC 5.600/2022 and 2800/2023). No commercial sponsor is named, and the funding and conflict of interest section contains no other declaration.

Do not read the denser low scores among boys, children from poorer families, or children who had an intracranial haemorrhage as evidence that these factors cause language delay. None of the associations or correlations reached statistical significance in this sample of 61 children, and the paper's own conclusion states that no significant associations were found. This study is too small and too preliminary to show that birth factors do not matter either.