Motor development in premature children

Investigators : Prof Mary Galea, Dr Bev Eldridge, Ms Tanya Darrer

The rate of survival of infants born prematurely is increasing. A substantial proportion of these children are diagnosed with a major disability by the age of 5 years, however there is very little longitudinal data on the development of motor skills in these children. Measurement tools currently available are not suitable for use in preterm infants. A Canadian measurement tool, the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) is a reliable observational measure of infant motor performance that could be suitable but has not yet been validated for this population. In addition, although Canadian normative data is available, it is not clear whether these norms are appropriate for Australian babies. In this project we wish to validate the AIMS in the preterm population and to compare developmental profiles of Australian term infants with those of Canadian infants. If the AIMS is shown to be suitable for Australian preterm and term infants, it can then be used by clinicians as an instrument for identifying delays in motor development that can be managed with early intervention.

The aims of the project are to:

1. Describe the profile of motor development of preterm infants from 4 to 16 months corrected age (ca) using the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS).

2. Compare the profile of term infants born in Melbourne Australia with the normative Canadian data for the AIMS as published by Piper and Darrah (1984).

3. To follow-up pre-term infants with AIMS scores below the 5 th percentile on more than one occasion in order to determine whether their motor skills continue to be delayed or abnormal after 2 years ca.

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