Abstract
It is well recognized that children born preterm have specific learning difficulties. The objective of this study is to carry out a systematic review and meta-analysis on preterm children's reading ability performance. Of the 486 studies identified, 53 met the inclusion criteria, resulting in 143 effect sizes. 33,500 children between 5 and 18 years were included of whom 13,765 were preterm infants and 19,735 were full-term infants. Among preterm-born children without neurodevelopmental disorders significant differences and larger effect sizes were found in the reading subcategories, letter-word knowledge, reading comprehension, and spelling, whereas no significant differences were found in phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming. Extremely preterm children showed larger effect size. The present meta-analysis, which includes a much larger number of studies, shows that preterm children have lower performance than full-term children in reading and spelling. This fact underlines the need to design, develop and implement neuroeducational programs that take into account the characteristics of preterm born students.
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This research was approved by the UNIR Research Ethics Committee (PI:015/2019). This work was supported by the Universidad Internacional de La Rioja under Grant number B0036-1920.
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Gutiérrez-Ortega, M., Álvarez-Bardón, A., Vergara-Moragues, E. et al. Reading abilities in preterm children: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Cogn Process (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-024-01192-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-024-01192-2