title: Thinking about social and nonsocial alternative possibilities in premature preschoolers.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Prematurely born preschoolers show developmental cognitive delay compared to full-term children. There are important neurological networks developing at preschool age related to perspective taking about the attribution of belief and to deduction with contrary-to-fact situations. Other deductive abilities may be completed during that period.
  
  
  METHODS
  A group of very prematurely born children (N = 35) aged between 4 and 5 years was compared with a control group of children born at full term (N = 35). They completed different cognitive tasks that required making inferences about possible true facts and false facts, and about others' beliefs.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results showed that preterm children had more difficulties with false beliefs and counterfactual tasks than the controls but they did not differ in equivalent deductive tasks.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We discuss the possible difficulties of preterm children when they first reach primary school age, not only with social perspective taking, but also with considering nonsocial contrary-to-fact alternatives. Prematurity is not a syndrome, but could be a risk condition. Therefore, these results are relevant in the field of differential diagnosis-in particular, for children with difficulties in perspective taking, a condition with which children born prematurely could share some characteristics.
authors.affiliation: a Faculty of Psychology , University of Almería , Almería , Spain.
authors.forename: María Dolores
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Roldán-Tapia
authors.affiliation: b Faculty of Psychology , University of Granada , Granada , Spain.
authors.forename: Sergio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Moreno-Ríos
authors.affiliation: a Faculty of Psychology , University of Almería , Almería , Spain.
authors.forename: Rosa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cánovas-López
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D032882:Comprehension; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D062071:Infant, Extremely Premature; D007234:Infant, Premature; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013850:Thinking
keywords: Inferences; Neuropsychological profile; Perspective taking; Prematurity; Theory of mind