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Preterm children with very low birth weight (<1,500 g) and extremely low birth weight (<1,000 g) have an increased risk of experiencing neuropsychological delays. The purpose of this study is to characterize the neuropsychological profile of very and extremely low birth weight preterm children and discover what maternal conditions, diseases, procedures, and alterations in preterm newborns could be related to their later neuropsychological development. Eighty-nine preterm children (aged from 5 to 7 years) were assessed on their intelligence quotient (IQ), executive function, memory, and visuospatial memory in a single session, using the RIST and NEPSY-II test. Parents provided sociodemographic data. Preterm children showed lower scores than normative values on impulsivity, visual short-term memory, and spatial relation abilities. Extremely-low-birth weight preterm children also showed less inhibitory control and worse mental rotation skills. Neonatal surgical procedures, late-onset sepsis, and periventricular hemorrhages had the greatest impact on neurodevelopment. When one or more of these conditions are present, memory is the most affected neuropsychological function, followed by visuospatial skills, inhibitory control, and IQ. It is important to take into account the presence of maternal conditions, diseases, interventions, and neonatal alterations in preterm newborns in order to determine the risk of neuropsychological delays in later development.

Spatial orientation is an important function in daily life because it allows us to reach a target place when moving through our environment, using self-centered (egocentric) or environmental information (allocentric). Compared to other cognitive functions, spatial orientation has been studied less in preschool ages. Some brain areas, such as the hippocampus and the temporal as well as the parietal and frontal cortices, are involved in spatial orientation. Therefore, when these brain regions are altered in neurological conditions or in atypical development in children, we would expect impairment of spatial abilities. The aim of this study is to review studies, published in recent years, that use egocentric and allocentric spatial orientation tasks for assessing spatial memory in preschool children, with the final goal of finding out which tests could be included in a clinical neuropsychological evaluation. We observed that although egocentric spatial orientation emerges first during development, allocentric spatial orientation tasks are employed at very early ages. Most of these tasks are performed in real environments, allowing children's self-movements and using environmental modifications, but technologies such as virtual or augmented reality are increasingly used. Other aspects are discussed, such as the lack of consensus in the nomenclature, the difficulty of tracing the course of development of spatial orientation, or the ecological validity of the tests used. We finally observed that there is greater interest in studying the allocentric framework than the egocentric one, which makes it difficult to compare the use of the two frames of reference during a neuropsychological evaluation in preschool-aged children.