Basic information processing abilities at 11 years account for deficits in IQ associated with preterm birth

Abstract

Although it is well established that preterms as a group do poorly relative to their full-term peers on tests of global cognitive functioning, the basis for this relative deficiency is less understood. The present paper examines preterm deficits in core cognitive abilities and determines their role in mediating preterm/full-term differences in IQ. The performance of 11-year-old children born preterm (birth weight <1750g) and their full-term controls were compared on a large battery of 15 tasks, covering four basic cognitive domains -- memory, attention, speed of processing and representational competence. The validity of these four domains was established using latent variables and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Preterms showed pervasive deficits within and across domains. Additionally, preterm deficits in IQ were completely mediated by these four cognitive domains in a structural equation model involving a cascade from elementary abilities (attention and speed), to more complex abilities (memory and representational competence), to IQ. The similarity of findings to those obtained with this cohort in infancy and toddlerhood suggest that preterm deficits persist – across time, across task, and from the non-verbal to the verbal period.

Rett syndrome: an eye‐tracking study of attention and recognition memory

“…The mean composite score on the Rett Syndrome Severity Scale 15 was 11.76 (SD 3.53), with two patients (7.4%) scoring in the mild range (0-7), 21 (77.8%) in the moderate range (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14), and 4 (14.8%) in the severe range (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21). The mean composite score on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale, 16 available for 26 patients with Rett syndrome was 44.20 (SD 10.14); all scores were greater than 2SD below the population mean.…”

“…The VPC has been widely used in young infants (<1y) and has proved to be sensitive to risk and predictive of later cognitive outcome. [10][11][12][13] Thus far, only one study, that of von Tetzchner et al, 14 has used a VPC paradigm (Fagan test) 9 with individuals having Rett syndrome, and no study has combined it with eyetracking technology, which enables a fine-grained examination of the relation of scanning patterns to memory.…”

“…[10][11][12] There were nine problems: five using achromatic photos of faces and four using multicolored abstract patterns (Fig. 1).…”

Changes in behavior and salivary cortisol after targeted cognitive training in typical 12-month-old infants.

“…Performance on several of these tasks during infancy has been shown to associate positively with long-term developmental outcomes: for example, infants' rate of change of looks upon repeated presentations of a stimulus shows reliable long-term associations with IQ and other general cognitive measures (Colombo & Mitchell, 2009); and visual recognition memory during infancy selectively associates with working memory, as assessed at 11 years (Rose, Feldman, Jankowski, & Van Rossem, 2012). We also included two measures used in previous studies, to assess whether previous training effects replicated in this, new sample.…”

Cognitive performance of premature infants: association between bronchopulmonary dysplasia and cognitive skills. Cross-sectional study

“…1 In comparison with full-term children, premature children present worse cognitive performance [1][2][3] in skills such as memory, attention, processing speed and representational competence. 4 In developing children, inefficiency in acquisition of elementary skills, such as attention and processing speed, can have a significant influence on their development of other more complex skills.…”