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Mental and motor development in preterm infants: the issue of corrected age
W Lems1, B Hopkins, J F Samson
1Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, Free University, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Insights
Corrected age is crucial for assessing preterm infant development. Full correction is recommended for mental development in the second half of the first year, with partial correction for earlier assessments and motor development.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Pediatric neurology
Background:
- Assessing preterm infant development requires accurate age correction.
- Standard developmental indices may be imprecise with extreme raw scores.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if corrected age is necessary for both mental and motor development in preterm infants throughout the first year.
- To evaluate the optimal correction method (full vs. partial) at different developmental stages.
Main Methods:
- Compared 36 preterm infants with 21 full-term infants using the Dutch Bayley Scales.
- Utilized age equivalent deviation scores for mental development at 12, 18, 24, 39, and 52 weeks corrected age.
- Assessed psychomotor development at 24, 39, and 52 weeks corrected age.
Main Results:
- Full corrected age is suitable for mental development assessment in healthy preterm infants during the latter half of the first year.
- Partial correction may be needed for earlier mental development assessments to avoid overestimation.
- Partial correction appears more appropriate for motor development in the second half of the first year.
Conclusions:
- The application of corrected age in preterm infant assessment varies by developmental domain and age.
- Clinical practice should consider tailored age correction strategies for more accurate developmental evaluations.
- Findings inform the precise assessment of cognitive and motor skills in preterm populations.
Abstract:
This paper addresses the question of whether corrected age needs to be applied to both the mental and motor development of preterm infants during the whole of the first year. A neglected problem in this respect is that a precise developmental index cannot be found with very low or very high raw scores. Using an alternative measure of performance (age equivalent deviation score), 36 preterm infants without serious medical or neurological problems were compared with 21 full-term infants on the Dutch version of the Bayley Mental Scale at the corrected ages of 12, 18, 24, 39 and 52 weeks and the Psychomotor Scale at 24, 39 and 52 weeks. Our findings suggest that full correction should be used in assessing the mental development of relatively healthy preterm infants during the second half of the first year. Assessments at earlier ages seem to overestimate the mental abilities of preterm infants, thus indicating that partial correction should be applied at these ages. For motor development during the second half of the first year a partial correction would seem more appropriate. The clinical implications of our findings are discussed.