Working memory in very-low-birthweight children at the age of 11 years

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Pediatrics

Background:

• Very-low-birthweight (VLBW) infants are at risk for neurodevelopmental challenges.
• Working memory (WM) is crucial for cognitive functions and can be affected by early life adversity.
• Baddeley's WM model provides a framework to assess distinct WM components.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the working memory (WM) performance of 11-year-old very-low-birthweight (VLBW) children.
• To examine WM domains—central executive (CE), visuospatial sketchpad (VS), and phonological loop (PL)—using Baddeley's model.
• To compare WM performance based on neonatal brain pathology and cognitive development against normative data.

Main Methods:

• Assessed 95 VLBW children at age 11 using the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (WMTB-C) and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV).
• Categorized VLBW children based on neonatal brain MRI findings (normal, minor, major pathology).
• Analyzed correlations among WM domains to understand model structure in the VLBW cohort.

Main Results:

• VLBW children, even with normal cognitive development, performed significantly worse on CE and VS compared to test norms.
• VLBW children demonstrated superior performance on the PL compared to norms.
• Major brain pathology in VLBW children was associated with significantly poorer performance on VS and PL.

Conclusions:

• Working memory, particularly central executive and visuospatial sketchpad functions, is significantly different in VLBW children compared to normative populations.
• These WM differences persist irrespective of the degree of brain pathology or cognitive development level.
• The structural relationships among WM domains in VLBW children may differ from those observed in typically developing populations.