Abstract
The purposes of infant evaluation are to detect the child with organic disease of the brain and to identify factors which will modify the course of development. Follow-up of 199 infants seen between 16 and 52 weeks and re-evaluated at an average age of 7 years indicates the infant evaluation is highly predictive and points out some of the most important factors which affect school-age behavior. This report is confined to DQ (general developmental quotient)-IQ (Stanford-Binet) changes.
Infant neurometor status and developmental quotient form the basic substrate, which is modified later by socioeconomic status and the occurrence of seizures after the infant examination.
Of the 30 non-defective infants who fell to IQ 75 or less at school age, only one was not explainable by associated adverse factors, singly or in combination: i.e., abnormal infant neuro-motor status, subsequent seizures, lowest third in the socioeconomic scale or other specific diseases such as Down's or cretinism. In contrast, if the child is in the highest socioeconomic third his school-age function is good, even if adverse factors are present. Only 5 of the 48 children with IQs 106+ would not have been expected to achieve this level on the basis of their infant behavior; only one of these was in the lowest socioeconomic third.
Perceptual-motor, language, school achievement and central nervous system integrative functions, as measured by a battery of tests at school age, were predicted at the same high level by the infant examination. The data indicate the importance of clinical judgment in diagnostic evaluation in infancy.
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Knobloch, H., Pasamanick, B. The predictiveness of infant developmental diagnosis. Pediatr Res 5, 376 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197108000-00024
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197108000-00024