Face recognition impairment in small for gestational age and preterm children.
Low birth weight—not prematurity—hurts children’s ability to remember faces.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested the children years. Half were born small for their age or preterm. Half were born on time and average weight.
Each child looked at photos of faces on a laptop. They had to pick out the same face shown seconds earlier. The task measured immediate recognition and short-term face memory.
What they found
Low-birth-weight children scored 15 points lower on face memory. Preterm children with normal weight scored the same as full-term peers.
The problem was birth weight, not early birth. Doctors often blame prematurity. This study says body size at birth matters more for face skills.
How this fits with other research
Velikos et al. (2015) and Yaari et al. (2018) showed preterm infants lag on Bayley-III and Mullen scales. Those studies pointed to early birth as the culprit. The new data say the real trigger is low birth weight, not how early the baby arrived.
Hedley et al. (2015) and Emerson et al. (2007) found face recognition deficits in autism and Williams syndrome. They proved face tasks can spot subtle social-perception problems. Our paper extends that idea to preterm kids with low weight, widening the at-risk pool.
Tang et al. (2025) revealed that even high-functioning preterm children show anxiety and attention issues later. Adding face-memory weakness completes the picture of a subtle but wide preterm phenotype that lasts into school age.
Why it matters
When you see a low-birth-weight child on your caseload, add face-memory probes to your assessment. Poor scores can flag social-learning risk before autism signs show. Use extra photo drills, emotion cards, and peer modeling to shore up face skills early.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Infants born prematurely or with low birth weight are at increased risk of visual perceptual impairment. Face recognition is a high-order visual ability important for social development, which has been rarely assessed in premature or low birth weight children. AIMS: To evaluate the influence of prematurity and low birth weight on face recognition skills. METHODS: Seventy-seven children were evaluated as part of a prospective cohort study. They were divided into premature and term birth cohorts. Children with a birth weight below the 10th centile were considered small for gestational age. All children underwent a full ophthalmologic assessment and evaluation of face recognition skills using the Facial Memory subtest from the Test of Memory and Learning. RESULTS: Premature infants scored worse on immediate face recognition compared to term infants. However, after adjusting for birth weight, prematurity was not associated with worse outcomes. Independent of gestational age, outcomes of low birth weight children were worse than those of appropriate birth weight children, for immediate face recognition (odds ratio [OR], 5.14; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.32-21.74) and for face memory (OR, 4.48; 95% CI, 1.14-16.95). CONCLUSIONS: Being born small for gestational age is associated with suboptimal face recognition skills, even in children without major neurodevelopmental problems.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2017 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2017.01.016