Very-low-birthweight and term small-for-gestational-age adolescents: attention revisited.

Aim: To assess whether adolescents with very low birthweight (VLBW) and peers born small for gestational age (SGA) at term are at a disadvantage when attending to or executing tasks.

Methods: Cohorts of 54 VLBW (
Results: VLBW adolescents scored worse than controls on Knox Cube Test, Stroop Colour-Word Test, TMT A & B and WCST, whereas term SGA adolescents only made more non-perseverative errors in WCST and more errors in the interference condition of the Stroop Colour-Word Test. Thirty-two (38.6%) adolescents in the control group had poor performance (< 2 SD) on at least one of the tests compared with 40 (74.1%) VLBW (p<0.01) and 32 (53.3%) SGA adolescents (not significant).

Conclusion: VLBW adolescents are at risk of disadvantage in aspects of attention and/or executive functions. The adverse effects of being born SGA at term appear to be few in these domains of cognitive function.