A cognitive cascade in infancy: Pathways from prematurity to later mental development

Using data from a longitudinal study of preterms and full-terms, the present study examined the structure of infant cognition at 12 months, the extent to which five 12-month abilities (attention, processing speed, recognition, recall, and representational competence) mediated the relation from prematurity to mental development at 2–3 years, and how continuity and change in infant information processing from 7 to 12 months affected later outcome. The results indicated that 12-month measures of infant information processing completely mediated the effect of prematurity on outcome and the infant measures form a ‘cognitive cascade’, similar to that seen at 7 months, in which the two more elementary abilities (attention and speed) influenced the more complex ones, which in turn influenced later cognition. Additionally, despite cross-age stability, 7-month assessments contribute to outcome independently of their 12-month counterparts, suggesting that infant abilities undergo important developmental transformations in the second half of the first year of life.