Local and global aspects of biological motion perception in children born at very low birth weight

Abstract

Biological motion perception can be assessed using a variety of tasks. In the present study, 8- to 11-year-old children born prematurely at very low birth weight (<1500 g) and matched, full-term controls completed tasks that required the extraction of local motion cues, the ability to perceptually group these cues to extract information about body structure, and the ability to carry out higher order processes required for action recognition and person identification. Preterm children exhibited difficulties in all 4 aspects of biological motion perception. However, intercorrelations between test scores were weak in both full-term and preterm children—a finding that supports the view that these processes are relatively independent. Preterm children also displayed more autistic-like traits than full-term peers. In preterm (but not full-term) children, these traits were negatively correlated with performance in the task requiring structure-from-motion processing, r(30) = −.36, p < .05), but positively correlated with the ability to extract identity, r(30) = .45, p < .05). These findings extend previous reports of vulnerability in systems involved in processing dynamic cues in preterm children and suggest that a core deficit in social perception/cognition may contribute to the development of the social and behavioral difficulties even in members of this population who are functioning within the normal range intellectually. The results could inform the development of screening, diagnostic, and intervention tools.

Motion Perception and Form Discrimination in Extremely Preterm School‐Aged Children

“…Pioneering studies by Braddick and Atkinson () found that, although children born preterm showed both dorsal and ventral stream deficits, global motion perception deficits were more severe as compared to global form discrimination deficits. These findings were confirmed by other studies involving both low‐level and high‐level motion perception processes (Downie, Jakobson, Frisk, & Ushycky, ; MacKay et al., ; Taylor et al., ; Williamson, Jakobson, Saunders, & Troje, ).…”

The effects of preterm birth on visual development

“…Adolescents who were born preterm (GA 27–33 weeks) and previously had PVL were found to have poorer biological motion perception than term‐born controls and children born preterm without PVL . Conversely, a later study reported significantly poorer biological motion perception in children born preterm compared to term‐born controls, but no statistically significant difference in performance between children born preterm with detected abnormalities on neonatal cranial ultrasounds and children born preterm without abnormalities …”

“…However, other vision problems such as reduced visual fields, impaired contrast sensitivity and cortical processing deficits that have been linked to preterm birth are not routinely screened for, due to time constraints and the need for challenging and/or non‐standardised tests . Such deficits may contribute to the difficulties in learning, attention, behaviour and cognition that some children born preterm experience, despite having normal or near‐normal visual acuity …”

“…In all of these psychophysical tests, the task is to assess the ability of the observer to distinguish the signal from the noise. Task difficulty can be altered by varying the signal to noise ratio in the stimulus, stimulus size, density of stimulus elements, presentation time, contrast, and in motion perception tasks, speed . This is of importance as the studies reviewed here have used different stimulus parameters, which constrains direct comparisons between studies.…”

Preference for Dynamic Human Images and Gaze‐Following Abilities in Preterm Infants at 6 and 12 Months of Age: An Eye‐Tracking Study

“…Ten‐year‐old full‐term and preterm adolescents without periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) can be equally sensitive to biological motion, but preterm adolescents with PVL showed reduced sensitivity to biological motion (Pavlova, Sokolov, Birbaumer, & Krägeloh‐Mann, ). Recently, Williamson, Jakobson, Saunders, and Troje () demonstrated that 8‐ to 11‐year‐old premature children with very low birthweight (<1500 g), including those with PVL, performed poorly on biological motion perception as compared with full‐term children. These biological motion perception characteristics in preterm children may be associated with the development of social and communication difficulties (Klin, Lin, Gorrindo, Ramsay, & Jones, ; Pavlova, ).…”