Cognitive Development in Rural Gambia: Relating Behavior and Growth from 6 – 24 Months of Age

The goal of our project is to establish assessments to evaluate the efficacy of nutritional interventions during the first 1000 days of life. Here we examine behavioral performance on a standardised developmental assessment scale (Mullen Scales of Early Learning; MSEL) and anthropometric growth indices in infants at a research station in West Africa. The MSEL is a developmental assessment battery for use from birth to five years of age. We adapted the MSEL for use in The Gambia. A committee of native, dual‐language speakers and trained MSEL administrators reviewed and adapted the measure where appropriate (i.e. linguistic translation of the item‐by‐item verbal prompts, as well as the substitution of stimuli that were deemed culturally inappropriate). 225 infants ranging from 6 – 24 months of age were assessed and their MSEL scores compared with an age‐matched group of infants tested in the UK. Relative to the U.K infants, scores of cognitive development declined over the first two years of life, particularly for the language subscales of the MSEL. An analysis of the relationship between growth and cognitive development revealed that height for age z‐scores correlated with scores on the MSEL. In particular for infants in their second year of life lower scores of cognitive development (MSEL) were related to lower height for age scores.