[Follow-up of low birth weight infants: language acquisition].

The objective of this work was to follow-up language development of full-term infants/small for gestational age (RNT/PIG) and preterm infants/adequate for gestational age (RNPT/AIG). The assessments were done monthly, up to their 18th months of age. Twenty infants were evaluated, 10 of each group. The Ethical Committee of the institution approved the project. It was used the Protocol for Anamneses and the Early Language Milestone Scale - ELM Scale. Both groups were compared with 47 full term, adequate for gestational age infants. The results had shown that up to the 6th month, the infants showed a normal performance for their age. In the 9th month, there was a delay in babbling production. In the 12th month, infants of the RNT/PIG group showed a significant statistically delay expressing polysyllabic babbling and infants of the RNPT/AIG group showed delay in the production of the first words. In the 18th month, the delay persisted in one infant of the RNT/PIG group.