The sensory profiles of infants who received different methods of premature

Abstract

This study investigated the sensory processing of premature infants between 7-12 months of age at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital using the standardised Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile. The design of research that was primarily utilised in this study was quantitative, cross sectional, descriptive research. Results indicated that 50% of all the premature infants were found to be low threshold infants, and tended to be over responsive to auditory, visual and tactile sensory stimuli. The Sensory Profiles of infants who underwent different methods of neonatal care including kangaroo mother care (KMC), where mothers were involved in a fulltime twenty-four hour KMC programme, and those who received mainly conventional care (CC) were compared. The only score that differed significantly between infants receiving different types of care was tactile processing, with the CC infants having more typical tactile processing scores. These findings were contrary to other KMC research, which may have been affected by the reliability of using this measure with this study sample and the small sample size of infants who received CC.