3.4 | Physical and neurocognitive development of DCDA-C
and DCDA-D infants at 2-3 years of age
Both height and weight of infants in the DCDA-D-L and DCDA-D-S groups
were significantly lower than those in the DCDA-C group (Figure
4A ). This also suggests that the larger twin within DCDA-D pairs is
also growth restricted to some degree compared to DCDA-C twins. However,
there were no significant dissimilarity in the first-speaking time and
the first-walking time among the three groups. The ASQ-3 subscale
consists of five developmental domains: communication, fine motor, gross
motor, problem-solving, and personal social, with 60 scores potentially
as a maximum value. We equally subdivided the 60 scores into four
intervals for each domain of the ASQ-3 and assessed infants’
neurocognitive development by comparing the low scores (30 scores or
less) in each domain between different groups (Figure 4B ). Both
the DCDA-D-L and DCDA-D-S groups showed higher frequencies of low scores
(<30 scores) in the fine motor, problem-solving domain, and
personal-social domain than the DCDA-C group. Remarkably, the DCDA-D-S
group showed much higher frequencies of lower scores (<15
scores) in the fine motor, and personal-social domains than DCDA-D-L and
DCDA-C groups (Figure 4B ).