Bhatoa, Raj Seraya;
Nijjar, Simrit;
Bathelt, Joe;
de Haan, Michelle;
(2025)
The impact of gestational age on executive function in infancy and early-to-middle childhood following preterm birth: a systematic review.
Child Neuropsychology
10.1080/09297049.2025.2467950.
(In press).
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Abstract
Lower gestational age (GA) is a risk factor for cognitive and developmental concerns following preterm birth. However, its impact on executive function (EF) is unclear based on conflicting conclusions across the literature. Moreover, as children below 4 years have largely been neglected from previous reviews, the impact of GA on EF within this early developmental period remains unclear. Hence, this systematic review investigated the impact of GA on EF following preterm birth in infancy and early-to-middle childhood. PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycInfo were searched for articles investigating the impact of GA on EF (inhibition, working memory, shifting) in preterm-born (<37 week gestation) and term-born participants aged 0–10 years. Eighteen studies were included. Most of the studies (n = 10) found no significant association between EF and GA. However, several limitations hindered conclusions to be drawn about the strength of this interpretation. Examples include inconsistencies in the theoretical underpinnings and operationalisations of EF, discrepancies in the reporting and measurement of GA, recruitment biases, and a paucity of infant or longitudinal studies available. Consequently, these issues may have contributed to inconsistent or null findings, and they must be addressed in future research to better clarify the impact of GA on EF in preterm-born infants and children.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The impact of gestational age on executive function in infancy and early-to-middle childhood following preterm birth: a systematic review |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/09297049.2025.2467950 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/09297049.2025.2467950 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Executive functions;gestational age; pretermbirth; infancy; childhood |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Developmental Neurosciences Dept |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10207039 |
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