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Selective attention and working memory in young adults born very preterm

Taylor Mills1,2, Leona Pascoe1,3,4, Megan Spencer-Smith1

  • 1School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

Plos One
|July 16, 2025
PubMed

Insights

Young adults born very preterm (VP) show slightly reduced working memory, but this is not due to attention problems. These findings help understand VP cognitive development and inform interventions.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Individuals born very preterm (VP; <32 weeks' gestation) often exhibit reduced working memory (WM) performance compared to term-born peers.
  • The specific cognitive mechanisms underlying this WM deficit in VP individuals remain unclear.
  • Selective attention is a critical cognitive skill that supports working memory function.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the impact of selective attention demands on working memory performance in young adults born very preterm (VP) versus term-born controls.
  • To determine if selective attention challenges explain the observed working memory differences in VP individuals.
  • To utilize a visuospatial change detection task to assess WM maintenance under varying attentional loads.

Main Methods:

  • A cohort of 111 young adults born VP (mean age 20.1 years) and 43 term-born controls (mean age 19.9 years) participated.
  • Participants completed an adapted visuospatial change detection task.
  • The task was designed to systematically vary selective attention demands during working memory maintenance.

Main Results:

  • The VP group showed slightly poorer working memory performance than the term-born group under minimal selective attention demands.
  • The difference in working memory performance between the VP and term-born groups did not significantly increase as selective attention demands were raised.
  • These results suggest that selective attention is not the primary factor explaining working memory deficits in VP individuals.

Conclusions:

  • Working memory reductions in very preterm-born individuals are unlikely to be attributable to selective attention deficits.
  • These findings offer crucial insights into the cognitive development of VP individuals transitioning into adulthood.
  • Understanding the cognitive phenotype of VP populations can guide the development of effective cognitive interventions for this high-risk group.
Abstract

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