Impact of a Developmental Stimulation Program on LanguageEvolution Age in 1- To 3-Year-Old Children with Celiac Disease

Introduction:children younger than 5 years are in the fastest growth and developmental period oftheir lives. regarding this, the present study was conducted to determine the effect of adevelopmental stimulation program on language evolution criteria in 1- to 3-year-oldchildren with celiac disease.materials and methods:this clinical trial was performed on two groups (i.e., intervention and control) of 50children aged 1-3 years with celiac disease using random allocation technique. adevelopmental stimulation program was implemented for the children in theintervention group in two-hour sessions every week for 2 months. the languageevolution age was evaluated by the bayley scales of infant development (bayley-iii).the data were analyzed using spss software (version 11.5).results:the mean age of the participants was 20.6±4.4 months. prior to the intervention, themean age of receptive and expressive language development showed no significantdifference between the two groups (p=0.672 and p=0.166, respectively). similarly,immediately after the intervention, the mean age of expressive language developmentin the intervention group (21.5±3.8) underwent no significant increase, compared tothat in the control group (19.1±4.5). this variable was not also significantly differentbetween the groups in the four-month follow-up (p=0.076). nonetheless, with regardto the mean age of receptive language evolution, this variable demonstrated asignificant increase in the intervention group (24.2±4.8), compared to that in thecontrol group immediately after the intervention (19.1±4.3; p=0.002). the results of thefour-month follow-up were also indicative of a significant difference between the twogroups in terms of the mean age of receptive language evolution (p<0.001).conclusion:based on the findings of the present study, the developmental stimulation program canbe used for promoting receptive language skills in children with celiac or other chronicdiseases.