Cognitive, academic and behavioural outcomes for children born at-risk: a transactional approach

Children who were born at a moderate biomedical risk and who were at low socioenvironmental risk, were assessed for cognitive and behavioural performance at age 4, and cognitive, behavioural and academic performance at age 8 in order to investigate: (1) their developmental outcome compared to a normative sample and, (2) the contribution of biomedical and environmental factors and their parents' perceptions of the parent-child reciprocal relationship to their developmental outcome. At age 4, the children were administered selected subtests of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale: Fourth Edition (SB-FE) to evaluate cognitive ability. The Child Behaviour Checklist/4-18 (CBCL) was administered to evaluate behaviour and the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) was administered to evaluate the Parental Perception of the Parent-Child Reciprocal Relationship. At age 8, the children were administered the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) to evaluate cognitive ability and the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised (WRAT-R) to evaluate academic achievement. The CBCL was administered again at age 8 to evaluate behaviour. The results provided support for the transactional theory. The only area of developmental difficulty found for the at-risk children was in academic achievement where they performed significantly lower than the normal sample in spelling and arithmetic. The main order of predictor variables (Biomedical, Environment, Total PSI) that was expected to show an increasing environmental influence with age showed no association with the children's outcome in spelling or arithmetic. In addition, based on significant correlations of the children's WISC-R Verbal IQ with their WRAT-R Reading, Spelling and Arithmetic scores, it was speculated that specific underlying cognitive deficits may also contribute to the low academic scores of low birthweight children. More refined measures of cognitive ability are needed in order to provide more information about this relationship. With one exception, neither the main order of predictors nor supplementary analyses of them, revealed any significant contribution to cognitive outcome at age 4 or 8. Of the more exploratory regression analyses that were conducted for behavioural outcome, the combination of the Biomedical and Environment factors predicted the 8-year old boys' Total behaviour score and the 8-year old girls' Externalizing behaviour respectively at age 8, with the Biomedical factor correlating the most highly. Secondly, the combination of the Biomedical and PSI factors predicted the 4-year old girls' Externalizing behaviour and Total behaviour score, and the 8-year old boys' Externalizing and Total behaviour score with the PSI influencing the girls and the Biomedical factor influencing the boys the most. Thirdly, the last combination of predictors, the Environment and PSI factors predicted the 4-year old girls' Externalizing behaviour and Total behaviour score, and the 8-year old girls' Externalizing and Total behaviour score, with the PSI making the greatest contribution in each case. As the study provided some support for the transactional theory, areas of focus for future research include; (1) the measurement of both the PSI and the HOME Scale from birth to late childhood, (2) the inclusion of more sensitive measures of specific cognitive skills and socio-emotional functioning, and (3) the testing of alternative theories to explain outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Keywords: Cognition disorders in children
Learning disabled children, Psychology
Learning disabilities
Problem children, Education