Caregiving behaviors and early cognitive development as related to ordinal position in preterm infants.

Naturalistic home observations of 54 preterm infants and their caregivers were made when the infants were 1, 3 and 8 months of age. Differences were found in the kinds of everyday transactions which occur with preterm infants raised with and without siblings. At 1 month of age the care of firstborn and later-born infants was similar in most ways. At 3 months and 8 months firstborn infants clearly received more responsive care and more stimulation from their mothers than later-born infants. Furthermore, the firstborn infant received more social transactions from anybody. Firstborn preterm infants obtained higher Gesell developmental scores than later-born infants, replicating results reported with infant test performance of full-term infants.