1. Jean Lowe Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Pediatrics Collaborators: Department of Pediatrics Pediatric Research Committee Division of Neonatology Department of Psychology MIND Institute

2. Bayley Scales of Infant Development (Nancy Bayley, 1969, 1984 1993, 2006) Mental Developmental Index (MDI) Measure of cognition, including fine motor and language skills Psychomotor Developmental Index (PDI) Measure of gross and fine motor skills Cognitive Scale Language Scale Receptive Communication Expressive Communication Motor Scale Gross Motor Fine Motor Social-Emotional Scale Adaptive Behavior Scale

3. The Still-Face Paradigm: A tool for examining socio-emotional outcomes (Erickson & Lowe, 2007) Purpose: To examine the dyadic nature of mother-infant interactions in 6 to 8 month-olds born VLBW and their mothers (N = 50) using the Still- Face Paradigm, specifically examining the relationship between changes in infant affect and maternal responsiveness (Erickson & Lowe, 2007) Findings: With an ↑ in maternal responsiveness, there was an ↑in infant positive affect. With a ↓ in infant positive affect, there was an ↑ in maternal responsiveness Maternal responsiveness was the strongest predictor of infant affect when compared to infant perinatal medical history, gestation, gender and cognition

4. Early Working Memory and Cognition in Ethnically Diverse Infants Born ELBW (Lowe, MacLean, Shaffer, Watterberg, 2008 ) Hypothesis: Object permanence would be directly related to emotional and attention regulation, that children with lower birth weight and higher illness severity would have more difficulty on object permanence items, and that no ethnic/racial differences would be found. 233 of the surviving 291 infants (80%) of the original multicenter PROPHET study were the subjects of this report. Results: Attainment of object permanence had a significant positive association with emotional and attention regulation, even after controlling for medical severity and socio-economic factors. More girls than boys passed object permanence items. There was no ethnic/racial difference on object permanence.

5. Future Research Brain imaging: Diffusion Tensor Imaging atlas overlay of 50 regions of the brain Spectroscopy Blood Flow