FOLLOW-UP-STUDY ON THE BEHAVIORAL-DEVELOPMENT OF JAPANESE NEONATES

The subjects were 53 healthy children from middle-class Japanese families. We examined them longitudinally with several kinds of assessment scales from 3 days to 36 months of age. The 30-day Motor score which was influenced by the mother's attitude to childrearing also had relationships with the later development. The clustering scores of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) on the 3 examination points accounted for 21-47% of the variance in developmental outcome. The stronger role of the grandmother at 10 days of age related to lower scores of the NBAS, but to higher scores of developmental indexes from the long-range viewpoint.