Effect of intensive care unit exposure on temperament in low birth weight preterm infants.
This study examined the hypothesis that low birth weight, preterm infants, owing to their severe illness and exposure to intensive care units (ICU), are predisposed to a more difficult temperament. Temperament was compared among three groups (n = 92): high-risk (HR) preterm infants (mean birth weight 1244 g), low-risk (LR) preterm infants (mean birth weight 2050 g), and full-term (FT) infants (mean birth weight 3159 g). Mothers completed the Infant Temperament Questionnaire (ITQ) when infants were 6 months (adjusted) old. The most striking differences were in mothers' subjective ratings of their infants: 21% of the HR mothers rated their infants as more difficult than average, compared to 4% of full-term and 0% of low-risk preterm mothers. By contrast, according to objective rating, HR infants met none of the ITQ criteria for the diagnostic category of "difficult." However, HR infants did have less favorable scores in mood, adaptability, persistence, and distractibility than LR and FT. When the HR group was further analyzed, differences in mothers' objective ratings were accounted for by length of hospitalization, while differences in mothers' subjective ratings were accounted for by severity of disease. Results suggest that, in our sample, exposure to ICU may have led to some temperament differences, but its effect was more pervasive on parents' perceptions of their infants.
D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007230:Infant, Low Birth Weight / Q000523:psychology*; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007234:Infant, Premature / Q000523:psychology*; D007363:Intensive Care Units, Neonatal; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality; D013694:Temperament