Cognitive abilities and language comprehension in preschool children with perinatal brain lesion

Perinatal brain lesion is a risk factor for development, making parents of such children particularly worried about consequences it may have on the child's cognitive and language development. Although literature findings on the outcome of perinatal brain lesion are inconsistent, most of the studies have found a positive general outcome, but also subtle deficits that affect the child's academic success. Since language comprehension and cognitive abilities influence learning abilities at school, we wanted to know how six-year olds who were selected based on pathological ultrasonographical findings (ischemic or hemorrhagic brain lesion) would perform on subtests of Wechsler battery (WISC) and language comprehension measures (Reynell Developmental Language Scale and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test), compared with controls. The second issue we investigated was whether in children who suffered a perinatal brain lesion cognitive abilities predicted the level of language comprehension in the same way as in children without perinatal brain lesion. The relation between cognitive and linguistic abilities is still a controversial one, and a different relation would mean that these two groups of children have different structure of abilities probably due to perinatal brain lesion. Forty children who suffered a perinatal brain lesion and forty age-matched children without perinatal risk factors were examined. Our results showed that the groups differed more in linguistic than in cognitive variables. Also, the two groups showed different relation patterns between cognitive abilities and language comprehension. Cognitive abilities were statistically significantly associated with language comprehension in children who suffered a perinatal brain lesion, while this association was not statistically significant within the control group. Since a number of participants with perinatal brain lesion had language difficulties, it is presumed that they rely on cognitive abilities in order to overcome and compensate for language shortcomings.