Original ArticleLanguage Abilities in Children Who Were Very Preterm and/or Very Low Birth Weight: A Meta-Analysis
Section snippets
Methods
The literature was searched systematically with the electronic databases MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and ERIC, for articles published between 1990 and November 2009 inclusive. Search terms are listed in Table I (available at www.jpeds.com). The searches were restricted to English-language publications in peer-reviewed journals. The broad keyword search had high sensitivity and yielded a total of 3386 items.
Studies were examined to determine whether they met these inclusion criteria: (1) examined
Results
Table III depicts the number of studies, total sample sizes, effect sizes, CIs, I2 statistics, and fail-safe N statistics for each language subdomain, categorized by age at assessment. When the category contained only 1 study, a meta-analysis could not be conducted, and so the statistics pertain only to the individual study identified with the systematic review.
Discussion
We demonstrate that VPT/VLBW children perform less well than control children on overall expressive and receptive language measures and in the more specific subdomains of expressive and receptive semantics. The results for expressive and receptive grammar were equivocal, with only one study in each subdomain and a low fail safe N statistic for the single significant effect size. No studies in the subdomains of phonological awareness, discourse, or pragmatics were identified.
The effect sizes
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