Associations between individual variations in visual attention at 9 months and behavioral competencies at 18 months in rural Malawi

Pyykkö, Juha; Ashorn, Per; Chilora, Eletina; Maleta, Kenneth; Ashorn, Per; Leppänen, Jukka

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0239613

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 75 publications

(115 reference statements)

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“…20 Visual orienting testing in infants has benefited from the replacement of manual methods of eye movement coding with more automated methods of eye-tracking that use remote infrared light sources and cameras. 21 22 The majority of studies examining infant visual orienting by automated eye-tracking come from high-resource laboratories in Western countries, but similar research has recently been expanded to assess visual orienting [23][24][25][26] as well as other aspects of cognition in children in less studied populations in mid-income and low-income countries. [27][28][29] These studies have shown that eyetracking can be performed in low-resource settings, typically at central healthcare facilities, [26][27][28] although the use of a portable system at participants' homes in rural Vanuatu has also been reported.…”

Section: Strengths and Limitations Of This Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing infant cognition in field settings using eye-tracking: a pilot cohort trial in Sierra Leone

Leppänen

Butcher²,

Godbout

et al. 2022

BMJ Open

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ObjectivesTo investigate the feasibility of eye-tracking-based testing of the speed of visual orienting in malnourished young children at rural clinics in Sierra Leone.DesignProspective dual cohort study nested in a cluster-randomised trial.Setting8 sites participating in a cluster-randomised trial of supplementary feeding for moderate acute malnutrition (MAM).ParticipantsFor the MAM cohort, all infants aged 7–11 months at the eight sites were enrolled, 138 altogether. For controls, a convenience sample of all non-malnourished infants aged 7–11 months at the same sites were eligible, 60 altogether. A sample of 30 adults at the sites also underwent eye-tracking tests as a further control.InterventionsInfants with MAM were provided with supplementary feeding.Outcome measuresThe primary outcomes were feasibility and reliability of eye-tracking-based testing of saccadic reaction time (SRT). Feasibility was assessed by the percent of successful tests in the infants. Reliability was measured with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Secondary outcomes were mean SRT based on nutritional state as well as and changes in mean SRT after supplementary feeding of MAM children.ResultsInfants exhibited consistent orienting to targets on a computer screen (>95% of valid trials). Mean SRTs had moderate stability within visits (ICCs 0.60–0.69) and across the 4-week test–retest interval (0.53) in infants; the adult control group had greater SRT stability (within visit ICC=0.92). MAM infants had a trend toward higher adjusted SRT at baseline (difference=12.4 ms, 95% CI −2 to 26.9, p=0.09) and improvement in SRT 4 weeks thereafter (difference=−14 ms, 95% CI −26.2 to −1.7, p=0.025) compared with age-matched controls.ConclusionsThe results demonstrate the feasibility of eye-tracking-based testing in a resource-poor field setting and suggest eye-tracking measures have utility in the detection of group level effects of supplementary feeding.

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Section: Strengths and Limitations Of This Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing infant cognition in field settings using eye-tracking: a pilot cohort trial in Sierra Leone

Leppänen

Butcher²,

Godbout

et al. 2022

BMJ Open

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“…From the assumption that attention in infancy is linked to the development of self-regulation, researchers have developed several attention indices based on behavioral observations and measures. Commonly used measures include dwelling time (Papageorgiou et al, 2015), looking duration (Kraybill et al, 2019; Rose et al, 2012), anticipatory looks (Holmboe et al, 2018; Pyykkö et al, 2020), visual disengagement (Geeraerts et al, 2019; Holmboe et al, 2018), or looking behavior in play contexts (Brandes-Aitken et al, 2019; Johansson et al, 2016). Indeed, due to the immature motor and verbal skills of infants, studies investigating attentional control in infants have heavily relied on various measures of looking behavior (Bornstein, 1985; Colombo et al, 1991; Colombo & Mitchell, 2009; Gredebäck et al, 2010; Oakes, 2010, 2012).…”

Section: Attentional Control In Infancymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although used as measures of attentional control, neither anticipatory looking behavior nor voluntary disengagement in the first year are associated with self-regulatory functions in infancy (Holmboe et al, 2018) nor later in toddlerhood (Geeraerts et al, 2019; Nakagawa & Sukigara, 2013; Pyykkö et al, 2020). Sustained attention, on the other hand, is associated with effortful control at both 22 months (Kochanska et al, 2000) and 2 years (Johansson et al, 2015), but not at 14 or 33 months (Kochanska et al, 2000).…”

Section: Attentional Control In Infancymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There exists an extensive body of work exploring the impact of attentional control on self-regulatory functions (Blankenship et al, 2019;Brandes-Aitken et al, 2019;Cuevas & Bell, 2014;Devine et al, 2019;Frick et al, 2018;Geeraerts et al, 2019;Holmboe et al, 2018;Johansson et al, 2015Johansson et al, , 2016Kochanska et al, 2000;Kraybill et al, 2019;Nakagawa & Sukigara, 2013;Papageorgiou et al, 2014Papageorgiou et al, , 2015Pyykkö et al, 2020;Rose et al, 2012). In short, these studies argue that attention is related to self-regulation later in life.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Attentional control is a stable construct in infancy but not steadily linked with self-regulatory functions in toddlerhood.

Tu¹,

Lindskog²,

Gredebäck³

2022

Developmental Psychology

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Attentional control in infancy has been postulated as foundational for self-regulation later in life. However, the empirical evidence supporting this claim is inconsistent. In the current study, we examined the longitudinal data from a sample of Swedish infants (6, 10, and 18 months, n = 118, 59 boys) across a broad set of eye-tracking tasks to find stable markers of attention. Two attention indices showed a high degree of stability and internal consistency but were not related to self-regulatory functions measures at 18 or 30 months. Our findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that a relation between attentional control and self-regulation is unsupported. We discuss the need for a revision of the idea of attention as foundational for self-regulation.

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The Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) Project: Longitudinal cohort study protocol

Lloyd-Fox,

McCann,

Milosavljevic

et al. 2023

Gates Open Res

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There is a scarcity of prospective longitudinal research targeted at early postnatal life which maps developmental pathways of early-stage processing and brain specialisation in the context of early adversity. Follow up from infancy into the one-five year age range is key, as it constitutes a critical gap between infant and early childhood studies. Availability of portable neuroimaging (functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and electroencephalography (EEG)) has enabled access to rural settings increasing the diversity of our sampling and broadening developmental research to include previously underrepresented ethnic-racial and geographical groups in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs). The primary objective of the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) project was to establish brain function - using longitudinal data from mother - for-age reference curves infant dyads living in the UK and rural Gambia and investigate the association between context-associated moderators and developmental trajectories across the first two years of life in The Gambia. In total, 265 participating families were seen during pregnancy, at 7-14 days, 1-, 5-, 8-, 12-, 18- and 24-months post-partum. An additional visit is now underway at 3–5 years to assess pre-school outcomes. The majority of our Gambian cohort live in poverty, but while resource-poor in many factors they commonly experience a rich and beneficial family and caregiving context with multigenerational care and a close-knit supportive community. Understanding the impact of different factors at play in such an environment (i.e., detrimental undernutrition versus beneficial multigenerational family support) will (i) improve the representativeness of models of general cognitive developmental pathways from birth, (ii) identify causal pathways of altered trajectories associated with early adversity at both individual and group level, and (iii) identify the context-associated moderators (i.e. social context) that protect development despite the presence of poverty-associated challenges. This will in turn contribute to the development of targeted interventions.

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Associations between individual variations in visual attention at 9 months and behavioral competencies at 18 months in rural Malawi

Cited by 5 publications

References 75 publications

Assessing infant cognition in field settings using eye-tracking: a pilot cohort trial in Sierra Leone

Assessing infant cognition in field settings using eye-tracking: a pilot cohort trial in Sierra Leone

Attentional control is a stable construct in infancy but not steadily linked with self-regulatory functions in toddlerhood.

The Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) Project: Longitudinal cohort study protocol

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