Abstract
The onset of 12 milestones that occur from 6 to 24 months of age was studied in premature and full-term infants. The milestones are: sitting, crawling, teething, walking, pursuit of a hidden sound-making object, stranger anxiety, separation anxiety, “no” gesture, words, phrases, speech “no,” and speech “yes.” It was hypothesized that premature infants would show delay in acquiring milestones related to time separated from mother. Compared to full-terms, the prematures had no significant difference in the means for the onset of the milestones except for: sitting, crawling and walking related to maternal separation; and crawling and teething, related to birth weight.
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The author is grateful to Juan Washington, M.D., who was Director, and his staff, of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit, and the Premature Outpatient Clinic of Charity Hospital in New Orleans for their excellent cooperation during this study; M. Kelly, R.N., who was Director, and her staff, at the Mary Buck City Health Clinic, Lawrence Weber, Ph.D., for help with the statistics; and David Taylor for the computer programming.
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Sugar, M. Some milestones in premature infants at 6 to 24 months. Child Psych Hum Dev 8, 67–80 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01463616
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01463616