title: Psychomotor development in Argentinean children aged 0-5 years.
abstract: In Argentina, there is no information on ages of attainment of developmental milestones and very few data about environmental factors that influence them. A national survey on the psychomotor development of children under 6 years of age was carried out with the help of 129 paediatricians. Logistic regression was applied to a final sample of 3573 healthy, normal children in order to estimate selected centiles (25th, 50th, 75th and 90th), together with their respective confidence intervals, of the ages of attainment of 78 developmental items belonging to the following areas: personal-social (18 items), fine motor (19), language (18) and gross motor (23). The 50th centile obtained for each of the 43 comparable items was compared with those obtained in previously standardised tests: DDST, Denver II, Bayley and Chilean scales. Neither significant nor systematic differences were found between our results and those described in the tests used for comparison. Multiple logistic regressions showed that social class, maternal education and sex (female) were associated with earlier attainment of some selected developmental items, achieved at ages later than 1 year. Selected items achieved before the first year of life were not affected by any of the independent environmental variables studied. The information is useful in helping paediatricians in their daily practice for surveillance of development, as baseline information for epidemiological studies on development in our country and for cross-cultural analysis.
authors.affiliation: Servicio de Crecimiento y Desarrollo, Hospital Garrahan, Buenos Aires, Argentina. hlejarraga@intramed.net.ar
authors.forename: Horacio
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lejarraga
authors.forename: María Cecilia
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Pascucci
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Krupitzky
authors.forename: Diana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kelmansky
authors.forename: Ana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bianco
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Martínez
authors.forename: Fabián
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Tibaldi
authors.forename: Noel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Cameron
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001118:Argentina; D001722:Birth Order; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008423:Maternal Age; D010372:Pediatrics; D011159:Population Surveillance; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012016:Reference Values; D012494:Sampling Studies; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors