Developmental outcome studies of children born preterm: Beyond the Bayley Scales

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Developmental outcome studies of children born
preterm Beyond the Bayley Scales
Collaborators Department of Pediatrics Pediatric
Research Committee Division of Neonatology Departm
ent of Psychology MIND Institute

• Jean Lowe Ph.D.
• Assistant Professor
• Department of Pediatrics

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Bayley Scales of Infant Development (Nancy
Bayley, 1969, 1984 1993, 2006)
Cognitive Scale Language Scale Receptive
Communication Expressive Communication Motor
Scale Gross Motor Fine Motor Social-Emotional
Scale Adaptive Behavior Scale

• Mental Developmental Index (MDI)
• Measure of cognition, including fine motor and
  language skills

• Psychomotor Developmental
• Index (PDI)
• Measure of gross and fine motor skills

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The Still-Face Paradigm A tool for examining
socio-emotional outcomes
Findings With an ? in maternal responsiveness,
there was an ?in infant positive affect. With a ?
in infant positive affect, there was an ? in
maternal responsiveness Maternal responsiveness
was the strongest predictor of infant affect when
compared to infant perinatal medical history,
gestation, gender and cognition
Purpose To examine the dyadic nature of
mother-infant interactions in 6 to 8 month-olds
born VLBW and their mothers (N 50) using the
Still-Face Paradigm, specifically examining the
relationship between changes in infant affect and
maternal responsiveness (Erickson Lowe, 2007)
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Early Working Memory and Cognition in
Ethnically Diverse Infants Born ELBW (Lowe,
MacLean, Shaffer, Watterberg, 2008 )

• Results Attainment of object permanence had a
  significant positive association with emotional
  and attention regulation, even after controlling
  for medical severity and socio-economic factors.
  More girls than boys passed object permanence
  items. There was no ethnic/racial difference on
  object permanence.

Hypothesis Object permanence would be directly
related to emotional and attention regulation,
that children with lower birth weight and higher
illness severity would have more difficulty on
object permanence items, and that no
ethnic/racial differences would be found. 233 of
the surviving 291 infants (80) of the original
multicenter PROPHET study were the subjects of
this report.
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Future Research

• Brain imaging
• Diffusion Tensor Imaging atlas overlay of 50
• regions of the brain
• Spectroscopy
• Blood Flow