title: Caregiving behaviors and early cognitive development as related to ordinal position in preterm infants.
abstract: Naturalistic home observations of 54 preterm infants and their caregivers were made when the infants were 1, 3 and 8 months of age. Differences were found in the kinds of everyday transactions which occur with preterm infants raised with and without siblings. At 1 month of age the care of firstborn and later-born infants was similar in most ways. At 3 months and 8 months firstborn infants clearly received more responsive care and more stimulation from their mothers than later-born infants. Furthermore, the firstborn infant received more social transactions from anybody. Firstborn preterm infants obtained higher Gesell developmental scores than later-born infants, replicating results reported with infant test performance of full-term infants.
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D001722:Birth Order; D002657:Child Development; D003071:Cognition; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007224:Infant Care; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007234:Infant, Premature; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008423:Maternal Age; D008425:Maternal Behavior; D014705:Verbal Behavior