Social-Cognitive Development in Infants Born Preterm

Abstract

Preterm birth is associated with an increased risk of adverse neurologic, psychiatric, and cognitive outcomes. The brain circuits involved in processing social information are critical to all of these domains, but little work has been done to examine whether and how these circuits may be especially sensitive to prematurity. This paper contains a brief summary of some of the adverse outcomes associated with prematurity, a review of studies of structural and functional brain development in preterm infants, and a description of findings from the modest body of research into social-cognitive development in infants and children born preterm. This review is followed by a series of analyses investigating the relationship between early joint attention behaviors, illness severity, and clinically concerning behaviors in a cohort of 249 preterm and full-term infants.