Tactile perception plays a pivotal role in the early stages of human development; however, little is known about tactile function in young children. A better understanding of how tactile function improves with age from early childhood to adulthood is fundamental in understanding atypical tactile experiences in childhood-onset neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder. In this study, one hundred and forty-two children and adults aged 3–23 years completed a vibrotactile testing battery consisting of five tasks, which rely on different cortical mechanisms. The battery was designed to be suitable for testing in young children and was used to investigate tactile perception from early childhood to adulthood. Our results show a general pattern of rapid, age-related improvements in tactile perception (lower discrimination threshold = greater sensitivity) across early childhood (ages 3–6 years). However, differences in the rate of change across tasks were observed, with tactile performance reaching adult-like levels earlier on same tasks than others. These findings highlight that early childhood is a period of rapid changes in tactile perception, and that the different underlying cortical, physical and cognitive development processes likely develop at different rates. Further, we are the first to show the feasibility of vibrotactile testing in an early childhood sample, which has important clinical implications for examining developmental disorders with altered tactile function and our results can be used as a reference.

Approximately 10% of births are preterm (PTB; <37 weeks gestational age; GA), which confers risk for cognitive, behavioral, and mental health challenges. Using the large and relatively diverse (i.e., designed to reflect sociodemographic variation in the US population) Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSMStudy (ABCD Study®), we characterized the impact of PTB on brain structure in middle-late childhood (9-10 years). The ABCD sample covers the GA spectrum, and the large sample size (∼11,500) permits consideration of how associations between PTB and brain structure are impacted by GA, sex, birthweight, and analytic choices such as controlling for total brain size. We found a pattern of relative cortical thinning in temporoparietal and dorsal prefrontal regions and thickening of medial prefrontal and occipital regions in PTB compared to children born full term (≥37 weeks GA). This pattern was apparent when controlling for mean thickness and when considering moderate (>32 and <37 weeks GA) and very PTB (≤32 weeks GA) separately, relative to full term birth. Surface area and subcortical volumes showed reductions in PTB children that were largely attenuated when controlling for brain size. Effects on cortical thickness and surface area were partially mediated by birthweight. Although boys are at increased risk for adverse outcomes following PTB, there was limited evidence of sex differences of PTB effects. Finally, cortical thickness effects estimated in a ‘discovery’ sample (N=7528) predicted GA in a holdout ‘replication’ sample (N=2139). Our findings help to clarify the effects of PTB on brain structure into late childhood across the GA spectrum.SignificancePreterm birth (PTB) affects ∼10% of children and increases the risk of neurodevelopmental and mental health challenges. Here we examined long-term effects of PTB on brain structure in middle-late childhood in the large and relatively diverse ABCD sample. We further assessed the influence of gestational age, sex, birthweight, controlling for brain size and data quality. Our findings replicate a pattern of occipitotemporal and dorsal prefrontal cortical thinning in PTB that was seen in both moderate preterm and very preterm relative to full-term birth. Effects were similar in males and females and partially mediated by birthweight. Our findings suggest that community-recruited children born preterm show a pattern of structural alterations on a continuum that relates to gestational age and birthweight.

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Background: Tactile processing plays a pivotal role in the early stages of human development; however, little is known about tactile function in young children. An understanding of how tactile processing changes with age from early childhood to adulthood is fundamental in understanding altered tactile experiences in neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder. Methods:In this cross-sectional study, 142 children and adults aged 3-23 years completed a vibrotactile testing battery consisting of 5 tasks, which rely on different cortical and cognitive mechanisms. The battery was designed to be suitable for testing in young children to investigate how tactile processing changes from early childhood to adulthood. Results:Our results suggest a pattern of rapid, age-related changes in tactile processing toward lower discrimination thresholds (lower discrimination thresholds = greater sensitivity) across early childhood, though we acknowledge limitations with cross-sectional data. Differences in the rate of change across tasks were observed, with tactile performance reaching adult-like levels at a younger age on some tasks compared to others. Conclusions:While it is known that early childhood is a period of profound development including tactile processing, our data provides evidence for subtle differences in the developmental rate of the various underlying cortical, physical, and cognitiveThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.