Objective To analyze the effect of early intervention on the intellectual development of low birth weight infants and maternal emotion. Methods A cohort of 135 low birth weight infants and their mothers was selected from January 2016 to June 2018, and the participants were randomly divided into intervention group and control group.The control group was given routine physical examination, and the intervention group was given family intervention training additionally.At the age of 3,9,18 months old, infants received Gesell intellectual development check, and the mothers filled out the Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) and the Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) to assess their emotion status at the same time. Results At 9 months old, there were significant differences on the gross motor, adaptive behavior and the language area between intervention group and control group (t=2.514,2.32,3.266,P<0.05).And at the 18 months old, there were statistically significant on the all five major functional areas (t=2.453、3.063、2.743、2.828、2.853,P<0.05). Repeated analysis of variance showed that the time influence on five major functional areas of developmental quotient (DQ) was significant(P<0.05).And the differences on the major functional areas of DQ except the gross motor area between intervention group and control group were significant (P<0.05).There were interactions only on the language areas between the intervention effect and time.In terms of maternal emotion, SDS score of mothers in intervention group was significantly lower than that in control group at the age of 9 months old (P<0.05).The scores of SDS, SAS at the age of 3,9,18 months old in two groups showed a decreasing trend, and the time influence on the scores of SDS and SAS was significant(P<0.05), while the intervention effect was not significantly different(P>0.05). Conclusions Early intervention can promote the intellectual development of low birth weight infants, but has limited influence on improving maternal emotion to some extent.