Structured observation of motor performance (SOMP-I) applied to preterm and full term infants who needed neonatal intensive care. A cross-sectional analysis of progress and quality of motor performance at ages 0-10 months.

A new protocol for Structured Observation of Motor Performance in Infants, SOMP-I, designed to describe both progress and quality of motor performance, was evaluated concerning its ability to describe and to discriminate between the motor performance observed in different groups of infants. Sixty-eight infants born at < 32 completed weeks (c.w.) of gestation formed group I, 81 infants born at 32-37 c.w. group II and 77 infants born at > 37 c.w. group III. Seventy-two neonatally healthy full term infants served as controls (group IV). The detailed assessment of level (progress) of motor development at 0, 2, 4, 6 and 10 months of age corrected for preterm birth disclosed few differences in mean level between the groups. Most were found between group I and the control group. In contrast, the quality of motor performance, expressed as proportion of infants with deviations, type of deviation, and total number of deviations per infant, showed many differences, especially between groups I and III, respectively, and the control group. Thus, the SOMP-I protocol permits a detailed assessment both of the level of motor development and the quality of motor performance but has a better discriminative ability for the latter.