Profiling through Kohonen self-organizing map: The effect of birth weight on the performance measures of an operant test battery

Two groups of 6-7 years old children at the Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH) are chosen for this study. The first group is the control group made of children with birth weight greater than or equal to 100 ounces. The second group is the preemies group made of children with birth weight less than or equal to 90 ounces. As a part of an Operant Test Battery (OTB), a set of five behavioral tasks is given to these two groups. Each task has several performance measurements (OTB Variables). It was shown previously that the OTB Variables may identify the children with attention deficit disorder (ADD). Thus, in this paper we try to investigate the birth weight effect on the OTB's performance of the two groups of children. By doing so, we try to determine whether the children with low birth weight have a higher chance of having attention deficit disorder (ADD) at later ages.