Visuo-motor coordination in 8-year-old children born pre-term before and after 28 weeks of gestation

Abstract

Purpose: This study compared the visuo-motor abilities between pre-term and full-term children.Methods: Twenty-three 8-year-old children participated, five being born under 28 weeks gestational age (wGA) referred to as Preterms1 (mean = 8 years 5 months [SD 0.3]), nine Preterms2 of 28–35 wGA (mean = 7 years 9 months [SD 0.7]) and nine typically developing full-term controls (mean = 8 years 6 months [SD 0.7]). All children were studied in an interhemispheric transfer time and in a visuo-manual pointing-task to test motor programming time in three conditions: unimanual pointing (dominant, non-dominant hands), mirror bimanual pointing (same direction for both hands) and opposite bimanual pointing.Results: Significant differences were detected between Preterms 1 and 2, the latter being similar to controls. Preterms1 presented increases in interhemispheric time, suggesting an alteration in the transcallosal pathways. Programming time was significantly lengthened (p < 0.01) for dominant hand unilateral pointing and opposite bilateral pointing and it was the shortest for mirror pointing.Conclusions: A faulty programming of visuo-manual tasks is suspected in Preterms1 with potential difficulty inhibiting the non-dominant limb mirror movement. This may result from an impaired interhemispheric inhibition owing to potential corpus callosum thinning. Such measures may be used to help follow-up subtle changes in fine motor control and detect pre-terms at risk of developing long-term deficits.