Antecedents of School Problems in Children Born Preterm

Data from a prospective longitudinal study of a group of infantsborn preterm were used to study early antecedents of schoollearning problems. Twenty-two children with learning problemswere compared to 67 children without problems on multiple earliermeasures of medical, neurobehavioral, cognitive, and socialfactors during the first 2 years of life and on concurrent functioningat 8 years. The results indicated that early hazardous medicalevents were not associated with later learning problems. Differenceswere found in the infants'own behaviors. The group with learningproblems scored significantly lower during early infancy onlyon measures of neurobehavioral functioning conducted at termdate. There were no differences on developmental measures duringthe 1st year of life although differences appeared in the 2ndyear of life. The learning problem group also scored lower onmeasures of language and nonverbal symbolic functioning in thesecond year of life. At 8 years, learning problem children haddifficulty with verbal comprehension and freedom from distractibilityfactors on the WISC-R. They were not different on behavior problemsas rated by their parents and teachers.