Specific cognitive abilities in 2-year-old children with subependymal and mild intraventricular hemorrhage

Subependymal and mild intraventricular hemorrhages (S/IVH) are likely to affect the subcortical and frontal cortex regions of the brain in premature infants. Damage to the subcortical and frontal areas has been associated with poorer performance in certain abilities, including visual attention, memory for location, and ability to change response set. This study investigated whether S/IVH, occurring at birth, affect these abilities in young children. Two-year-old premature children with S/IVH, premature children with normal neonatal head ultrasound scans, acid full term children with normal births were evaluated on a series of tasks. These tasks were a habituation/novelty preference task (visual attention), Piaget's invisible displacement task (memory for location), an object discrimination reversal task (ability to change response set), and the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (traditional infant test). Premature children with hemorrhage performed significantly less well on the task of ability to remember the last location of a hidden object and on the task of ability to reverse response set. Both groups of premature children performed significantly less well than full term children on systematic search for an object once the order of hiding was reversed. There were no significant differences among the three groups on the habituation/novelty preference task or on Bayley scores. Results suggest that both S/IVH and prematurity affect development of specific cognitive abilities. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.