Preterm Birth and Social Cognition
Preterm Birth and Social Cognition
The study aims at investigating social cognition outcomes of children born prematurely.
 Social cognition can be briefly defined as a process which underlines people's social and
 emotional behaviors. There are behavioral and cognitive evidences indicating that preterm
 children have executive dysfunctions. Executive functions refer to multiple cognitive
 processes that contribute to human higher order abilities, such as purposeful and
 future-orientated behavior. The literature regarding development of term born children
 indicates that executive functions are linked to the emergence of social cognition. Then, the
 investigators asked if children born prematurely, as they commonly present executive
 dysfunctions, would show an atypical development of social cognition. Additionally, as it has
 been shown that parental anxiety is a key factor of preterm children development, the
 investigators assumed that it should play a role in social cognition outcomes.
The present study examines the social cognition development of very preterm children at 7 to
 10 years old. In the literature, there has yet to be any research on social cognition of
 children born prematurely while preterm children are usually described as having difficulties
 in social relations. The main hypothesis is that preterm children would present a deficit or
 a delay in the social cognition development in comparison with that of matched term children,
 and that this deficit or delay should be explained by executive dysfunctions and parental
 anxiety.

 Social cognition can be defined as the ability to understand the mind of other people and
 more specifically to perceive emotion, to have empathy, to attribute false-belief, to
 understand intended meaning, among others. In this study, the investigators will mainly focus
 on the ability of 80 very preterm children to understand the mind of others, well known as
 theory of mind in the literature, thanks to small stories involving the thinking and feelings
 of characters.

 The executive functioning, which refers to multiple processes underlying human higher order
 abilities, will be assessed thanks to standardized neuropsychological tests. In this study,
 the investigators will focus on the three main well known executive functions: inhibition,
 working memory and shifting. They expect, consistently with the literature, that preterm
 children will have executive dysfunctions, and that these will be linked to children theory
 of mind abilities.

 Finally, given that parental anxiety affects child development, the investigators plan to
 assess some psychological features of children's parents in our study, such the level of
 parental anxiety. They assume that this level will also be linked to theory of mind abilities
 of children.
Inclusion Criteria:

 Preterm children:

 -  Girls or boys born before 37 weeks of gestational age.

 -  Aged between 7 to 10 years-old

 -  At school

 Term children:

 -  Girls or boys born after 37 weeks of gestational age.

 -  Aged between 6 and 10 years-old: 6 year-olds were included for the mental age matching
 with preterm children.

 -  At school

 Exclusion Criteria:

 -  Children :

 -  Child with a intrauterine growth failure

 -  Child from multiple births

 -  Child with organic malformation

 -  Child with a genetic anomaly

 -  Child with a neuromoteur pathology

 -  Child with a global developmental delay (Intellectual quotient inferior to 80).

 -  Parents :

 -  Minor parent (less than 18 year old)

 -  Parent with an intellectual disability

 -  Parent with a psychotic syndrome

 -  Parent who does not understand French