Visual perception and visual motor skills at four years of age of neurologically normal, extremely low birth weight children with neonatal periventricular brain injury

grantor: University of TorontoThe study examines the effects of periventricular brain insult on a group of extremely low birthweight (ELBW) infants at four years corrected age on measures of visual perception, memory, motor planning and visual spatial manipulation. The performance of 60 ELBW children, divided into three groups with varying degrees of periventricular brain insult, is compared to a group of 22 ELBW children without brain insult. The groups are comparable in terms of gestational age, birthweight, days ventilated, bronchopulmonary dysplagia, and size for gestational age. Visual motor integration was unimpaired in all children assessed regardless of brain insult status. Increasing frequency of deficits in the interpretation of visual spatial information and motor planning are associated with periventricular damage. This reaches statistical significance when the most severely affected children with periventricular leukomalacia or periventricular echoes are compared to the no insult preterm group. There is also a trend for difficulties on tasks involving visual perceptual information and memory to be associated with increasing severity of brain insult but, the differences are not statistically significant.M.A