Moderation of Stimulus Material on the Prediction of IQ with Infants' Performance in the Visual Expectation Paradigm: Do Greebles Make the Task More Challenging?

Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the role of the stimulus material for the prediction of later IQ by early learning measures in the Visual Expectation Paradigm (VExP). The VExP was assessed at 9 months using two types of stimuli, Greebles and human faces. Greebles were assumed to be associated with a higher load on working memory in comparison to human faces. IQ was assessed at 3 years and 4 months of age. Sixty‐four children participated at both assessments in this longitudinal study. The results show a moderation of the stimulus material on the prediction of IQ. With Greebles as stimulus material, a significant relationship between infants' learning and IQ was found. There was no relation when infants' learned in the VExP using human faces. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Maternal choline supplementation during the third trimester of pregnancy improves infant information processing speed: a randomized, double‐blind, controlled feeding study

“…Moreover, those findings were not model dependent because they were observed in both unadjusted and a priori covariate‐adjusted models. In light of prior evidence that infant saccade reaction time predicts IQ scores and information processing speed in early childhood (31, 32), our findings support the view that maternal choline supplementation has lasting beneficial effects on offspring cognitive function. Finally, our findings indicate that the last trimester of pregnancy constitutes a sensitive period for the functional effects of maternal choline supplementation on cognitive development, consistent with the animal data (19, 38).…”

“…A final strength is that we used infant reaction time as an outcome. Reaction time measures a central dimension of infant information processing and has been shown to predict cognitive performance later in life (31, 32).…”

“…In contrast, the number of anticipatory saccades an infant makes depends greatly on the nature of the stimulus sequence presented and has not generally provided a reliable index of age‐related changes or individual differences during infancy (33, 34). However, measures of visual anticipation in young infants have been shown to predict IQ scores in childhood (32) and some components of adult IQ (35).…”

“…Reactive saccades provide an early measure of information processing speed—widely acknowledged to be an important dimension of individual differences in human cognitive performance and intelligence (30). That is, infant saccade reaction time, assessed on 1 occasion as early as 3‐4 mo of age, predicts information processing speed later in childhood (assessed in a manual reaction time paradigm) and childhood intelligent quotient (IQ) scores (31, 32). Moreover, longitudinal studies reveal that infant saccade reaction time shows lawful, age‐related changes across the first year of life and robust stability of individual differences during infancy (33, 34).…”