DEVELOPMENT OF A REGIONAL COHORT OF VERY-LOW-BIRTH-WEIGHT CHILDREN AT6 YEARS - COGNITIVE-ABILITIES ARE ASSOCIATED WITH NEUROLOGICAL DISABILITY AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND

The authors studied the intelligence, memory, visuomotor skills and la nguage of 298 six-year-old children with very low birthweight (VLBW) ( less than 1500g). Of 591 VLBW children born from July 1983 to June 198 6 within 50km of the centre of Hamburg, Germany, 330 were traceable at age six years and 298 of these were seen by a neuropaediatrician and a psychologist: the other 19 were too severely disabled for psychologi cal assessment with the standardized tests used. The mean memory perfo rmance of VLBW children at age six years was below the standard mean i n all diagnostic and socio-economic subgroups. As expected, visuomotor development was clearly influenced by neurological but not socio-econ omic status. Intelligence and language skills were much more closely r elated to socio-economic background than to neurological morbidity. Ho wever, VLBW children with hyperactivity, clumsiness or cerebral palsy differed significantly in intelligence and visuomotor performance from those without neurological symptoms.