  Physical growth traits can be naturally represented by continuous functions.
In a large dataset of infancy growth patterns, we develop a practical approach
to infer statistical associations between growth-trajectories and IQ
performance in early childhood. The main objective of this study is to show how
to assess physical growth curves and detect if particular infancy growth
patterns are associated with differences in IQ (Full-scale WASI scores) in
later ages using a semi-parametric functional response model. Additionally, we
investigate the association between different growth measurements in terms of
their cross-correlation with each other, their correlation with later IQ, as
well as their time-varying dynamics. This analysis framework can easily
incorporate or learn population information in a non-parametric way, rendering
the existence of prior population charts partially redundant.
