BIOMEDICAL AND SOCIAL-ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON COGNITIVE AND VERBAL-ABILITIES IN CHILDREN 1-TO-3-YEARS OF AGE

The study had two purposes. The first was to study the effects of biom edical and environmental conditions on cognitive and language developm ent in a longitudinal sample of 96 children studied from birth to thre e years of age. The sample was characterised by mostly healthy, full-t erm infants, with few preterm and very low birthweight infants. It was hypothesised that biomedical factors would be more strongly related t o cognitive and language development in the first two years and that e nvironmental factors would more strongly influence outcomes at age thr ee years. The second purpose of this study was to use an analysis appr oach that permits the estimation of variables assumed to underlie the measurement data. This approach was compared with the results of more traditional analyses (e.g. correlation and regression analyses). The r esults supported the hypothesis, and also supported the results of som e other research utilising subject samples which were characterised by more severe perinatal and neonatal complications than characterised t he sample of the present study.