Thinking about social and nonsocial alternative possibilities in premature preschoolers

ABSTRACTIntroduction: Prematurely born preschoolers show developmental cognitive delay compared to full-term children. There are important neurological networks developing at preschool age related to perspective taking about the attribution of belief and to deduction with contrary-to-fact situations. Other deductive abilities may be completed during that period. Method: A group of very prematurely born children (N = 35) aged between 4 and 5 years was compared with a control group of children born at full term (N = 35). They completed different cognitive tasks that required making inferences about possible true facts and false facts, and about others’ beliefs. Results: Results showed that preterm children had more difficulties with false beliefs and counterfactual tasks than the controls but they did not differ in equivalent deductive tasks. Conclusions: We discuss the possible difficulties of preterm children when they first reach primary school age, not only with social perspective taking, but also with ...