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Updated: Mar 24, 2026
Preterm EEG: A Multimodal Neurophysiological Protocol
Published on: February 18, 2012
Poorer divided attention in children born very preterm can be explained by difficulty with each component task, not
Louise Delane1, Catherine Campbell2,3, Donna M Bayliss1
1a Neurocognitive Development Unit, School of Psychology , The University of Western Australia , Perth , Crawley , Australia.
Insights
Children born very preterm (VP) show deficits in attention tasks, but not in executive-level abilities. Their difficulties may stem from cumulative impacts on lower-level cognitive processes rather than distinct executive impairments.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Pediatric Neurology
Background:
- Children born very preterm (VP, ≤ 32 weeks) often display executive functioning deficits.
- It remains unclear if these deficits arise from cumulative lower-level cognitive impairments or distinct executive function issues.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether very preterm children have separable executive function impairments using a dual-task paradigm.
- To differentiate between cumulative non-executive deficits and specific executive-level deficits in VP children's attention.
Main Methods:
- A dual-task paradigm was employed to assess executive processes in attention.
- 77 VP children and 74 controls completed selective, sustained, and divided attention tasks (Test of Everyday Attention for Children).
- Dual-task cost was calculated to index executive-level contributions to performance.
Main Results:
- The VP group performed worse on selective and divided attention tasks, with a trend for poorer sustained attention.
- No significant differences in dual-task cost were observed between VP children and controls.
- This indicates that VP children do not exhibit a separable executive function impairment.
Conclusions:
- The findings suggest that attention deficits in VP children may result from the cumulative impact of vulnerable lower-level cognitive processes.
- The results do not support a hypothesis of a distinct executive-level impairment in very preterm children.
- Further research should explore the specific lower-level cognitive vulnerabilities contributing to attention difficulties in VP populations.
Abstract:
Children born very preterm (VP, ≤ 32 weeks) exhibit poor performance on tasks of executive functioning. However, it is largely unknown whether this reflects the cumulative impact of non-executive deficits or a separable impairment in executive-level abilities. A dual-task paradigm was used in the current study to differentiate the executive processes involved in performing two simple attention tasks simultaneously. The executive-level contribution to performance was indexed by the within-subject cost incurred to single-task performance under dual-task conditions, termed dual-task cost. The participants included 77 VP children (mean age: 7.17 years) and 74 peer controls (mean age: 7.16 years) who completed Sky Search (selective attention), Score (sustained attention) and Sky Search DT (divided attention) from the Test of Everyday Attention for Children. The divided-attention task requires the simultaneous performance of the selective- and sustained-attention tasks. The VP group exhibited poorer performance on the selective- and divided-attention tasks, and showed a strong trend toward poorer performance on the sustained-attention task. However, there were no significant group differences in dual-task cost. These results suggest a cumulative impact of vulnerable lower-level cognitive processes on dual-tasking or divided attention in VP children, and fail to support the hypothesis that VP children show a separable impairment in executive-level abilities.
