Browsing by Author "Kaisto, Soila"

Objectives. This study examines the effects of low birth weight (LBW) and perinatal hyperbilirubinemia (HB) on interference control in adulthood. The study questions are whether LBW and HB are associated with interference control difficulties in adulthood, and whether increasing cognitive load affects the association. Based on previous research on perinatal risk factors and executive functioning, the hypotheses were that individuals with LBW and HB would show a greater change in reaction times from congruent to incongruent stimuli in the Flanker task than controls and that adding a dual-task would slow the performance more in the risk groups than in controls. Methods. The participants (N = 274) in this study were collected from a large longitudinal cohort study of Finnish children with perinatal risk factors and their healthy peers. Those with purely one perinatal risk factor (LBW or HB) and completion of the Flanker task at the 40-year neuropsychological assessment were included in this study. The controls (N = 78) had completed the Flanker task but had no perinatal risk factors. The repeated measures of analyses of variances was used to examine the relationship between risk groups and the Flanker task. Results and conclusions. There were no statistically significant differences between groups in the changes in reaction times from congruent to incongruent stimuli in the Flanker task. However, the LBW group performed overall slower compared to controls. In Dual Flanker task, LBW group’s performance was poorer compared to controls, especially in reaction times to incongruent stimuli, indicating difficulties in cognitive flexibility. In Dual Flanker task, the difference in reaction times from congruent to incongruent stimuli decreased in all groups. There were no differences between HB group and control group. All differences became nonsignificant when general intelligence (FSIQ) was considered. This could be due to the fact that performance in both FSIQ and Flanker task require cognitive flexibility and speed.