Attentional system of very prematurely born preschoolers.

Recent studies indicate that premature children are at risk for difficulties with cognitive development and have increased incidence of ADHD as well as other behavioral disorders. Although the exact mechanism accounting for these children's neuropsychological abnormalities is unknown, there is evidence to suggest that the cognitive and behavioral disturbances seen in this population may result from a slower development of the attentional system. However, it remains unclear whether prematurity affects the development of the entire attention system or if prematurely born children have a selective insufficiency of components of this system (i.e., orienting, alerting, executive). We compared the efficiency of the attentional system of very prematurely born children and full-term controls at 5 years of age, using the Attention Network Task-Child Version. In comparison to full-term peers, very preterm children exhibited inefficient orienting of attention, whereas there was no group difference in the efficiency of alerting and executive aspects of attention. The reason for the selectively suboptimal orienting of attention in very prematurely born preschoolers remains unclear; it is possible that the neural substrates of this attentional subsystem are particularly underdeveloped in the preschool period in this cohort. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).