Visual motor integration and overall development of preterm and at term children at the beginning of schooling

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the influence of prematurity and low birth weight on development indicators, such as visual motor coordination, visual perceptive and fine motor skills of children in early schooling, as well as their relations with rates of global developmental delay. Method: It is a comparative study of case-control type. The research included 18 children with a history of preterm birth (Study Group), matched with 18 children without the same history (Comparison Group). These children were evaluated by the Denver Developmental Screening Test II and the test of Visual Motor Integration - VMI. Results: Statistical tests revealed significant differences between the Study Group and the Comparison Group regarding the visual motor (p = 0,000) and fine motor (p = 0,007) variables, while significant difference in performance between the Low Birth Weight and Appropriate Birth Weight groups was observed in the visual motor (p = 0,000), visual perceptive (p = 0,016) and fine motor (p = 0,036) variables, demonstrating that weight is more influential than prematurity in visual perception performance. Significant differences were observed in all parts of the VMI instrument (p = 0.001, p = 0.000, p = 0.000) when compared to the Denver Suspect and Denver Normal groups; it is possible to observed that poor performance on screening tests for development can be a predictive factor for poor performance on tests of visual motor integration. Conclusions: Preterm children showed worse performance in the assessment instruments confirming that preterm birth represents a risk to development. Skills of greater complexity required during schooling for reading and writing can be influenced by the visual motor, visual perceptive and fine motor difficulties.