Parental optimism & self-efficacy: Associations with cognitive development in children born preterm

An increasing emphasis has been placed on identifying factors that facilitate and support optimal early development of susceptible children. Parents' cognitions have been documented as serving an important function in parent-child interactions, two parental cognitions that were investigated for this research. Optimism has proven to be associated with better psychological and physical adjustment to stressful events while high parental self-efficacy is strongly associated with the capacity to provide an adaptive, motivating, and nurturing environment for raising a child. The relationship between specific parental characteristics and the cognitive abilities of preterm pre-school aged children has not been studied in depth. Participants were 58 preterm children and 44 full term children who took part in a neurocognitive assessment, along with their parents who completed four questionnaires assessing parental optimism and self-efficacy. Parental optimism and self-efficacy did not demonstrate a significant association with cognitive outcome in this preschool-age cohort. However, a significant association was found between parent ratings of optimism of Extremely Low Birth children and their child's Special Nonverbal Composite.