[Precursors of hyperactive disorders: potential early diagnosis in infants?].

Objectives: Are there any differences (organic, psychosocial, psychopathological, cognitive or educational, respectively differences in the motor or neurological development) between infants who later on at the age of 8 years suffer from a hyperactive disorder and those who later on at the same age are undisturbed? Are there specific harbingers for hyperactive disorders in the group concerned?
Methods: With regard to their developmental risk load at the age of 3 months, 26 primary school children with hyperactive disorders were compared with 241 healthy children, 25 children with emotional disturbances, and 30 children with socially disruptive behaviour, all of the same age.
Results: Identified as the most important predictors for the onset of hyperactive disorders were a reduced birth weight, the mother's origin from a shattered family, early contact impairments on the part of the child, and the mother's neglect of the infant.
Conclusions: Altogether, however, the prediction of later hyperactivity in primary school children on the basis of salient features in the infant children remains unsatisfactory and unspecific.