Intellectual, cognitive and academic outcomes of very low birth weight adolescents living in disadvantaged communities

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Since the introduction of neonatal intensive care, infants that are extremelypremature and of very low birth weight (VLBW) are now surviving. There isconcern as to whether many of them have developmental problems. A studyof the relevant literature revealed that VLBW children tend to score lower thantheir peers on IQ tests, reading accuracy, reading comprehension, spellingand maths. Studies on developmental outcome in VLBW infants have allbeen conducted in developed countries. The situation in developing countrieshas therefore not been investigated.The purpose of this study was to investigate the intellectual, cognitive andacademic outcomes of 18 English- and Afrikaans-speaking adolescents(between 12 and 14 years) who weighed less than 1250g at birth and wereliving in disadvantaged communities in Cape Town. Their performance wascompared with controls matched for age, sex and socio-economic status. Therelationships between intellectual ability, cognitive controls and academicachievement were also investigated. Intellectual ability was assessed bymeans of the Senior South African Intelligence Scales-Revised (SSAIS-R),and the Cognitive Control Battery (CCB) developed by Santostefano wasused to assess cognitive functioning. The academic achievement testsincluded the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (and the Afrikaans version, theAfrikaanse Prosaleestoets), the ICE Spelling test (and the Afrikaans version,the IPV Speltoets) and the SchonelI 5 Mathematics test.Results showed that no significant differences were found between the indexand control groups on IQ scores, cognitive control measures or academicachievement. These findings suggest that the low socio-economic status ofall the adolescents had a levelling effect on their performance. There weresome positive correlations between intellectual ability, cognitive controls andacademic achievement. It was recommended that a programme of CognitiveControl Therapy which was developed by Santostefano, be implemented byeducators in classrooms to improve cognitive control functioning andacademic performance.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University