Associations of gestational age and sex with attention regulation development in children born preterm from school entry to 2nd grade

Abstract

Preterm birth, defined as birth before 37 weeks of gestation, is known to increase the risk of neurodevelopmental delays, particularly in attention control. Attention regulation has been found to be impaired in children born preterm. There is mixed evidence on the possible inter-actions between the sex of the child and preterm birth in the context of developing attention problems.

This thesis investigated how gestational age and sex influence the development of attention regulation in preterm-born children. Using data from a previous longitudinal study, attention control development was analyzed in 57 preterm-born children in their first grade of primary school. A novel measure of attention was constructed from cognitive tests (WISC-IV), teach-er assessments (TAAS), and parent ratings (SDQ). Statistical analysis using linear mixed mod-els tested whether gestational age or sex significantly predicted attention development across three timepoints lasting little over a year.

Results showed no statistically significant effects of gestational age or sex on attention devel-opment. Variation in attention was mostly explained by individual differences rather than group-level predictors. The null findings suggest that between 28 and 35 weeks of gestation, gestational age does not strongly predict attention outcomes during early school.

The null findings of this thesis are well in line with previous studies on this age group and there might be multiple reasons behind them, like plateau in the attention regulation develop-ment at this age group, relatively short time span of the longitudinal study and the lack of both full term controls and extremely preterm participants.