Maternal Education Level Predicts Cognitive, Language, and Motor Outcome in Preterm Infants in the Second Year of Life

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the relative impact of maternal education level (MEL) on cognitive, language, and motor outcomes at 20 months’ corrected age (CA) in preterm infants. Study Design A total of 177 preterm infants born between 2008 and 2010 were tested at 20 months’ CA using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development-III. Multiple regression analyses were done to determine the relative impact of MEL on cognitive, language, and motor scores. Results Infants born to mothers with high school MEL were 3.74 times more likely to have a subnormal motor index, while those born to mothers with some college and graduate school MEL had reduced odds (0.36 and 0.12, respectively) of having subnormal language index at 20 months. In linear regression, MEL was the strongest predictor of cognitive, language, and motor scores, and graduate school MEL was associated with increases in cognitive, motor, and language scores of 8.49, 8.23, and 15.74 points, respectively. Conclusions MEL is the most significant predictor of cognitive, language, and motor outcome at 20 months’ CA in preterm infants. Further research is needed to evaluate if targeted interventions that focus on early childhood learning and parenting practices can ameliorate the impact of low MEL.

Parenting stress and development of late preterm infants at 4 months corrected age

“…Male sex was also a significant predictor of increased risk of delay in communication development. In a similar study (Patra, Greene, Patel, & Meier, 2016), lower language scores were found in male infants up to the age of 20 months.…”

“…For mothers, higher levels of education predicted decreased risk of delay only in personal-social development. Patra et al (2016) reported that higher maternal education was the best predictor of positive child development. In our study, older maternal age predicted increased risk of delay in personal-social development.…”

Early changes in brain structure correlate with language outcomes in children with neonatal encephalopathy

“…A major limitation of this study was that we did not have data regarding maternal education or socioeconomic status for this cohort. These variables are known to mediate differences in receptive and expressive language skills and risk for language delays in early childhood ( Dollaghan et al, 1999 , Fernald et al, 2013 , Howard et al, 2011 , Ko et al, 2013 , Patra et al, 2016 , Wild et al, 2013 ), and may also be related to measures of brain growth ( Betancourt et al, 2015 , Hanson et al, 2013 , Luby et al, 2013 ) and function ( Tomalski et al, 2013 ), with one study showing effects on structural MRI as early as 5 weeks ( Betancourt et al, 2015 ). It is conceivable that the specific findings affected here could be modulated by exposure to language in the first 6 months of life.…”

Attention/Memory Impairment is Correlated with Motor Speech Disorder in Parkinson’s Disease

“…Previous MRI examinations have shown that lesions in cognitiverelevant cortical areas, especially those closely associated with educational level, frequently occur in SD patients [28][29][30]. Given that educational level is usually positively associated with high-level cognitive function, this finding might partially explain why there were more PD patients with low educational levels in the MSD group in the present study [31][32][33][34].…”