Perinatal pH and Neuropsychological Outcomes at Age 3 Years in Children Born Preterm: An Exploratory Study

Early Psychological Development of Very Preterm and/or Low Birth Weight Children: A Review of the Literature

“…The main differences and similarities found in the studies were the following: several of these studies found a close association between the different developmental domains; many studies investigated the influence of prematurity on cognitive development and its relationship to language development (40,41,45,47,48,52,58). Other studies compared the cognitive component and social-emotional aspects (35,36,37,44,48,49,73,75) and yet others compared communicative-linguistic skills and emotional development (48,74).…”

“…Espy et al (41) also found that at this age preterm children experience problems with vocabulary. Van Lierde et al (61) found that at this age preterm children had poorer receptive language skills (comprehension of questions, use of passive sentences, inference skills and use of prepositions), expressive language skills (defining words and expressing semantic relations) and morphosyntactic skills.…”

“…One study found that preterm children have no problems in expressive and receptive language development in general at 5 years (63) and other study found that these children have problems in some specific components of expressive language (sentences), but they do not have problems in other components (information) at 3 years old (60). In vocabulary, some studies found that preterm children have problems at 2, 3, 5 and 6 years old (41,47,50,57,60,62,64) and other studies found that they have no problems (58,59,60). Some studies found that preterm children have problems in communication skills (verbal) in the first two years of life (17,54), but others found that these children have no problems in communication skills (nonverbal) at 3 years old (60).…”

“…Some studies found that preterm children have problems in communication skills (verbal) in the first two years of life (17,54), but others found that these children have no problems in communication skills (nonverbal) at 3 years old (60). Some studies have suggested that there is an association between vocabulary problems and perinatal hypoxia, a condition experienced by many preterm children (41). Lower maternal education levels, poorer communication skills and white matter abnormalities have been suggested as good predictors of language development in preterm children over the long term (17), and have been closely associated with potential cognitive function deficits (50,65).…”

“…In relation to cognitive development, the research found global cognitive delays in children born prematurely, but the specific cognitive processes most affected are memory from 2 to 6 years (40,42,43,45,47,48,52), attention from the first year of birth (35,36,38,41,44) and visual-spatial processing at 3-4 years (42,43,45). However, there is no consensus on the degree of impairment of memory and executive function, because some studies find they are not affected in the first 2 years (37), and other studies find worse scores at 5 and 6 years (48, 52).…”