Behavior Problems in Relation to Sustained Selective Attention Skills of Moderately Preterm Children.

The team studied 107 moderately preterm young learners. Each child was born 3-5 weeks early but had no major brain injury.

Kids took a 10-minute computer game. They pressed a button when a target card appeared. The game measured how long they could stay focused.

Parents filled out a checklist about behavior problems like hitting, yelling, or ignoring rules.

The preterm group scored worse on the attention game. They missed more targets and took longer to respond.

These same kids also had more parent-reported behavior problems. The worse the attention score, the higher the behavior rating.

Attention gaps explained about one-third of the extra behavior issues.

Tang et al. (2025) later asked the same kids, parents, and teachers for ratings. They found the same attention slips plus new anxiety and social worries. Together the studies show the preterm behavioral picture keeps widening after third grade.

Yaari et al. (2018) tracked preterm babies from birth. They saw early motor and language delays that slowly widened. Griffith et al. (2012) pick up the story at school age and point to attention as one engine still driving the gap.

Bremer et al. (2020) looked at attention and math in mostly term-born kids. They also found that weaker attention predicted academic trouble. The pattern looks similar across preterm and term groups, but preterm kids hit the threshold more often.

If you work with preterm clients, screen sustained attention around age 8. A simple continuous performance task takes ten minutes and flags kids whose behavior issues may stem from attention deficits. Targeting attention with self-monitoring or differential reinforcement of on-task behavior could prevent bigger emotional and social problems later.