ArticlePediatric research2026
Associations of language barriers with very preterm children's behavioural and socio-emotional problems across Europe.
Article in Pediatric research, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Neurodevelopment in Preterm Children at 12 Months: Aligning Clinical Observations and Parental Insight.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Language barriers and mental health problems of preschool children born very preterm in Germany.Developmental medicine and child neurology · 2025Observational
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7 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundVery preterm birth (<32 weeks gestation, VP), immigrant background, and language barriers are all independently associated with a high risk for mental health problems in childhood, but research has neglected the long-term development of immigrant children born VP. We assessed whether behavioural and socio-emotional problems of 5-year-old children born VP growing up across different language contexts in the European Union are associated with an immigrant background and linguistic distance of families' mother tongue (L1) to the host countries' official languages.
methodsData are from a population-based cohort including all VP births in 2011/12 in 11 European countries; a total of 3,067 children were followed up at 2 and 5 years of age. Behavioural and socio-emotional difficulties were assessed using the parent-reported Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ).
resultsMixed-effects models showed that a larger linguistic distance of children's L1 to the host countries' official language was associated with higher SDQ total scores (0.02 [0.01, 0.03]), after adjusting for a wide range of social risks, biological, and perinatal clinical factors.
conclusionLanguage barriers in the form of linguistic distance between VP children's L1 and countries' official languages play a critically important role for the behavioural and socio-emotional development of immigrant children born VP. IMPACT: Immigrant children born very preterm across Europe face systemic inequalities such as language barriers. Language barriers can be operationalised as a continuous linguistic distance score between children's mother tongues and countries' official languages. Linguistic distance plays an important role for the behavioural and socio-emotional development of immigrant children born VP. Research, policy, and practice need to better account for language barriers to increase equity in health and education.
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