Infants with myelomeningocele: visual recognition memory and sensorimotor abilities

The cognitive development was explored of 29 infants with myelomeningocele. Although as a group they tended to be less likely to demonstrate visual recognition memory than a matched control group, excluding the more severely cognitively impaired infants from analysis rendered this difference non-significant. Infants with myelomeningocele demonstrated more verbal imitation on the Uzgiris-Hunt Assessment Scales than the controls, but there were no statistically significant differences between the groups on the Objects Permanence, Schemes, or Objects in Space subscales. The two groups did not differ on the majority of demographic and environmental variables examined, suggesting that group differences may be due to differences in biomedical variables. However, within the myelomeningocele group, environmental variables correlated with the majority of the cognitive measures, while correlations between cognitive performance and both demographic and biomedical variables were at chance level.