Prematurity may negatively impact means-end problem solving across the first two years of life.
Andrea Baraldi Cunha, Iryna Babik, Samantha M Ross and 4 others
PMID 29609836WHAT IT FOUND
Preterm infants took longer to shift toward goal-directed object-to-goal problem solving through 24 months.
Full-term infants were more likely to pull a towel or spin a turntable to get a toy. Early object exploration was associated with later success, so offer varied object play.
Key findings
01Full-term infants were more likely than preterm infants to succeed at pulling a towel or spinning a turntable to retrieve a toy.
02The shift toward goal-directed behavior emerged later in preterm infants, and the full-term-preterm gap was larger for the turntable task (3.6 months) than for the towel task (1.2 months).
03More object exploration at 6 months and around 12 to 18 months was associated with greater trial success through 24 months, while less variability around 18 to 24 months was also associated with greater success.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
This was an observational comparison, not a treatment trial, so it cannot show that prematurity caused the problem-solving differences or that means-end tasks diagnose later impairment. The sample was small (53 infants) and the preterm group was heterogeneous, including different birth weights and some infants with brain injury. Some key group differences were borderline, including the towel task goal-directed and non-goal-directed behavior comparisons (p = .065 and p = .064). Birth weight and gestational age were not significant within the preterm group, possibly because the preterm range was narrow or power was low. The authors' suggestions about using exploration amount and variability as diagnostic signs are not tested in this paper. Outcomes were coded from home assessments of two specific tasks, not a standardized clinical diagnosis or broader cognitive or language measure.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not report a funding source or author conflict-of-interest declaration. It does state that participants received monetary compensation.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the lower success rates as proof that preterm infants will have later learning disabilities or that an object-to-goal task can diagnose them. This study compared 53 infants without an intervention, did not test diagnostic accuracy, and some within-preterm analyses were not statistically significant.