Premature infants are at risk for a variety of developmental problems.
Delays in language development, perceptual processing and social interaction have been reported in prematurely born children. These delays may be due to hospitalization, separation from parents, and the need for medical intervention. The purpose of this study is to describe the communicative patterns of premature infants and mothers, and to compare their interactive communication abilities to mothers and their term infants over the first 4 months of life. Extensive behavioral coding will be used to determine the quality, frequency, duration and sequence of vocal and non vocal behavior of the mothers and infants. Sequential analysis of the interactions will be performed.