Relations Between Head Growth and Psychomotor Development in Low-Birth-Weight Children

Abstract

Child development is a multi-directional process taking place simultaneously at the physical and psychical level. These processes are coexistent permanently and leading to a child’s psycho-physical maturity. Especially during the first two years of life body size seems to strongly correlate with psychomotor activity (Brandt 1986, Livshits et al. 1992, Lindhal 1987, Ounstedt et al. 1984, Piekkala et al. 1988). Mutual relationships between the physical and psychomotoric development in the early childhood are extremely interesting as they allow to make a prognosis of the level of psychomotoric development, based on the routine anthropometric tests, and thus they allow for early stimulation of children being at hazard of psychomotoric deficiencies in the further development. The most frequently quoted characteristics of physical development, which may further influence psychomotoric development of a child, are birth parameters (Furmaga-Jablonska et al. 1998, Livshits et al. 1992, 1993, Piekkala et al. 1988, Simon et al. 1993, Sheth et al. 1995). Livshits et al. (1993) confirmed that a child’s physical characteristics and maturity, which are defined by the gestational age, body weight and height as well as the head circumference at birth, may be important for predicting its future psychomotoric development. Those authors underline that the head circumference may be of statistical significance for predicting psychomotor development (Livshits et al. 1992).