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Cardiac response to speech sounds in preterm infants: effects of postnatal illness at three months.

The effect of postnatal illness, specifically respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), on preterm infants’ attention to auditory stimuli at 3 months of age was examined in three groups of infants; healthy preterm, preterms who had RDS, and a sample of normal term infants. Infants were presented 2 sessions of 9 trials of synthesized consonant-vowel sounds. The first 7 trials consisted of a binaural presentation in which the CV stimulus /ba/ or /pa/ was presented simultaneously to both left and right ears. The eighth and ninth trials consisted of a dichotic presentation in which the speech stimuli /ba/ and /pa/ were presented, one sound to the left ear and one sound to the right ear. EKG was recorded throughout the presentation. Analyses of covariance with prestimulus heart period as the covariate and heart period during stimulus presentation as the dependent measure were computed to investigate cardiac orienting, habituation and recovery. Results reveal significant cardiac orienting by healthy term and preterm infants on trial 1, habituation across trials 1–7, and recovery of cardiac orienting to stimulus change on the second novel presentation by healthy term and preterm. RDS preterm infants exhibited cardiac orienting to the first stimulus presentation but they did not evidence a change in cardiac level across redundant trials or a response recovery to the novel stimulus. RDS preterms throughout exhibited shorter heart period levels (faster heart rates) than either healthy term or healthy preterm infants. Results are discussed in relation to the effect of RDS on autonomic reactivity.