Longitudinal developmental profiles in 4- to 5-year-old Dutch children: a latent profile analysis
European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Published online on July 08, 2026
Abstract
{"p"=>"We aimed to gain knowledge on children’s development by distinguishing developmental profiles based on neurological and motor assessments in infancy, and motor and cognitive assessments at early school age. Profile characteristics and the associations between profiles and behavioural characteristics at early school age were also examined. Based on their neurological and motor scores at an age between 3 and 18 months, we invited 703 Dutch children of 4–5 years old (369 with atypical and 334 with typical infant neuromotor behaviour) of whom 518 (74%) participated in the current study. A latent profile analysis was performed to identify the developmental profiles. We examined profile characteristics and compared the parent-reported behavioural and emotional difficulties, ASD traits and ADHD traits at early school-age between the developmental profiles. We found four developmental profiles: ‘typical development’, ‘early advanced development’, ‘developmental catch-up’ and ‘developmental difficulties’. Being a boy was associated with the ‘developmental difficulties’ profile and being a girl and high parental educational level were associated with the ‘typical development’ profile. Children in the ‘developmental difficulties’ profile showed the most behavioural and emotional difficulties, ASD traits and ADHD traits The four profiles pointed to highly varying developmental patterns, underlining the inter- and intra-individual variability of development and showing the challenges of predicting later developmental outcome based on infancy assessments."}