The effect of early developmental problems in infancy: perspectives and clinical implications

Excerpt

In this month’s issue, Guedeney et al. [1] set out to test the prospective association between infant social withdrawal and childhood IQ using a longitudinal prospective design. Longitudinal cohorts are amongst Europe’s best resources for understanding prospective associations relevant to child development and child mental health [2]. The study hypothesised that social withdrawal at 1 year would be prospectively associated with cognitive development at 5–6 years. A great strength of the study was the availability of an assessment of motor and language development concurrent to the assessment of social behaviour. Main findings that higher social withdrawal at 1 year was prospectively associated with IQ at 5–6 years were not maintained when language and motor development scores at 1 year were included in the model. In fact, infants with high social withdrawal scores had much lower language development scores and somewhat lower motor development scores at 1 year compared to children with lower social withdrawal, thus showing a cross-sectional association between social withdrawal and motor/language development. …