Paediatrics (RCH) - Theses

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Development of working memory in very preterm children

Arthursson, Pia-Maria Saga Helena ( 2017)

Children born very preterm (VP; <32 weeks’ gestation) show wide-ranging long-term neuropsychological difficulties compared with their term-born peers, including reduced language, attention, memory and learning. One area of concern in VP children is working memory (WM), referring to the capacity to maintain and to manipulate information for a brief period of time. WM is a core capacity for higher-order human behaviours, such as reading comprehension, abstract reasoning and arithmetic. In healthy children, the development of WM has been reported to be associated with the protracted neurobiological maturation of the frontal-parietal neuronal network, continuing into late adolescence. However, the development of WM in VP children is largely unknown. It is not clear whether VP children continue showing WM difficulties compared with term-born peers across child development, or whether the neuronal basis of WM in VP children differs from that of their term-born peers. The objective of this dissertation was to address these gaps in the research literature by conducting three research studies using a longitudinal cohort of VP children and term-born controls.