Antecedents of School Problems in Children Born Preterm

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Abstract
Data from a prospective longitudinal study of a group of infants born preterm were used to study early antecedents of school learning problems. Twenty-two children with learning problems were compared to 67 children without problems on multiple earlier measures of medical, neurobehavioral, cognitive, and social factors during the first 2 years of life and on concurrent functioning at 8 years. The results indicated that early hazardous medical events were not associated with later learning problems. Differences were found in the infants'own behaviors. The group with learning problems scored significantly lower during early infancy only on measures of neurobehavioral functioning conducted at term date. There were no differences on developmental measures during the 1st year of life although differences appeared in the 2nd year of life. The learning problem group also scored lower on measures of language and nonverbal symbolic functioning in the second year of life. At 8 years, learning problem children had difficulty with verbal comprehension and freedom from distractibility factors on the WISC-R. They were not different on behavior problems as rated by their parents and teachers.

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