Development of egocentric and allocentric spatial orientation abilities in children born preterm with very low birth weight

Abstract

Background: very low birth weight preterm infants show neuropsychological alterations in functions such as memory or visuospatial skills, although certain related functions, such as spatial orientation, have not been studied. Objectives: to compare children born preterm and at term between the ages of 5 and 7 years on egocentric and allocentric spatial orientation, and relate their performance to visuospatial skills, behavior, memory in daily environments, and perinatal risk factors. Study design: observational cross-sectional study Subjects: 88 very low birth weight children born preterm and 59 controls. Outcome measures: IQ (RIST), visuospatial skills (NEPSY II: Route Finding and Geometric Puzzles), spatial orientation (Egocentric and Allocentric Spatial Memory Test-Children's Version), behavior (BASC questionnaire for parents), memory in everyday environments (ECM-Q questionnaire for parents), and perinatal risk factors (collected from medical records). Results: Children born preterm obtain significantly lower scores than controls on the RIST, Route Finding, and Allocentric Spatial Memory Tests. Although spatial orientation is related to other neuropsychological variables in both premature and control children, there is no meaningful association with behavior or daily memory in children born preterm. The perinatal risk factors that are associated the most with visuospatial and orientation problems are surgical procedures and peri-and intraventricular hemorrhages. Conclusions: Children born preterm with low birth weight present difficulties in their spatial orientation, and for this reason, we propose including these types of tasks in the usual neuropsychological evaluation.

Measuring spatial navigation during locomotion in children: A systematic review

“… 5–7-year-olds used both egocentric and allocentric frames of reference to navigate. [ 11 ] 6 55 TD ___ ___ [ 65 ] 6 59 88 TD PT ___ ___ PT infants had lower performance in allocentric tasks, related to their visuospatial abilities in reaching space. Self-reference orientation tests [ 29 ] 6.45 28 TD Comparison of visual vs self-movement information.…”

“…However, reproducing a path after 5 min – which depends more on long-term memory – was unaffected. The preterm population shows lower performance in topographical memory, which is further affected by their level of attention [ 26 ] and spatial orientation [ 65 ].…”

Adaptations of the Walking Corsi Test (WalCT) for 2- and 3-year-old preterm and term-born toddlers: A preliminary study

“…Fernandez-Baizan et al evidenced how 22 months old preterm infants performed worse than their peers when remembering a location and updating learned information (43). Also, 5-6 years old children born preterm with low birth weight have difficulty orienting themselves using an allocentric strategy (42). Besides, the literature describes poorer selective attention and worse visuospatial, visuomotor and fine motor performance in preterm-born infants without major neurological dysfunctions (44)(45)(46)(47), which might affect topographic working memory.…”

Neuropsychological Development and New Criteria for Extrauterine Growth Restriction in Very Low-Birth-Weight Children

“…Nevertheless, several studies show that the neuropsychological development of preterm infants can affect functions, for instance, memory [13,14], visuospatial skills [15,16], or executive functions [17,18], although these have not been considered in previous literature with respect to postnatal growth.…”