Visuo-manual coordination in preterm infants without neurological impairments.
Even preterm babies with clean brain scans show hand-eye delays by six months.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Petkovic et al. (2016) watched how preterm babies move their hands toward toys.
They compared these babies to full-term babies of the same age.
All babies had normal brain scans and no known disabilities.
What they found
The preterm babies showed clear delays in hand-eye coordination.
They reached more slowly and less smoothly than the full-term babies.
These gaps were present even though the preterm babies looked at toys just as long.
How this fits with other research
Yaari et al. (2018) followed similar babies for 18 months and found the delays grow wider over time.
Pascoali Rodovanski et al. (2021) showed that short home programs can improve visual tracking, but motor gains were small.
Pino et al. (2017) remind us that some preterm kids later show hidden attention problems on top of motor issues.
Why it matters
You can spot visuo-motor red flags in neurologically "clear" preterm infants as early as six months.
Add a quick reaching test to your routine check-ups for any baby born before 37 weeks.
If movements look shaky, start tracking milestones monthly and refer early rather than waiting for a clear diagnosis.
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Join Free →Time a preterm baby’s reach for a toy and note any jerky or slow path — flag for follow-up if speed or accuracy lags behind age charts.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The extent of and reasons for visuo-manual coordination deficits in moderate and late preterm born infants without neurological impairments are not well known. This paper presents a longitudinal study on the visuo-manual development of twelve preterm infants, born after 33-36 weeks of gestation without neurological complications, between the ages of 6 and 12 months. Visuo-manual integration and grasping were assessed using the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales, along with bimanual coordination and handedness tests. Visual function was examined once prior to the beginning of the study. Gross motor development was also evaluated every month. Preterm infants were compared to a control group of ten full-term infants according to corrected age. Compared to full-terms, the visual perception of preterm infants was close to normal, with only a measure of visual fixation lower than in full-terms. In contrast, preterm infants had delayed development of visuo-manual integration, grasping, bimanual coordination, and handedness even when compared using corrected age. Tonicity and gestational age at birth were the main variables associated to the delays. These results are discussed in terms of the possible factors underlying such delays. They need to be confirmed on a larger sample of preterm born children, and to be correlated with later development. This would allow developing markers of future neuropsychological impairments during childhood.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2016.01.010