Associations between developmental trajectories of movement variety and visual attention in fullterm and preterm infants during the first six months postterm

Quantifying interaction with robotic toys in pre-term and full-term infants

Infants born pre-term are at an increased risk for developmental, behavioral, and motor delay and subsequent disability. When these problems are detected early, clinical intervention can be effective at improving functional outcomes. Current methods of early clinical assessment are resource intensive, require extensive training, and do not always capture infants' behavior in natural play environments. We developed the Play and Neuro Development Assessment (PANDA) Gym, an affordable, mechatronic, sensor-based play environment that can be used outside clinical settings to capture infant visual and motor behavior. Using a set of classification codes developed from the literature, we analyzed videos from 24 pre-term and full-term infants as they played with each of three robotic toys designed to elicit different types of interactions-a lion, an orangutan, and an elephant. We manually coded for frequency and duration of toy interactions such as kicking, grasping, touching, and gazing. Pre-term infants gazed at the toys with similar frequency as full-term infants, but infants born full-term physically engaged more frequently and for longer durations with the robotic toys than infants born pre-term. While we showed we could detect differences between full-term and pre-term infants, further work is needed to determine whether differences seen were primarily due to age, developmental delays, or a combination.

Selective Changes in Complexity of Visual Scanning for Social Stimuli in Infancy

In the 1st year of life, infants gradually gain the ability to control their eye movements and explore visual scenes, which support their learning and emerging cognitive skills. These gains include domain-general skills such as rapid orienting or attention disengagement as well as domain-specific ones such as increased sensitivity to social stimuli. However, it remains unknown whether these developmental changes in what infants fixate and for how long in naturalistic scenes lead to the emergence of more complex, repeated sequences of fixations, especially when viewing human figures and faces, and whether these changes are related to improvements in domain-general attentional skills. Here we tested longitudinally the developmental changes in the complexity of fixation sequences at 5.5 and 11 months of age using Recurrence Quantification Analysis. We measured changes in how fixations recur in the same location and changes in the patterns (repeated sequences) of fixations in social and non-social scenes that were either static or dynamic. We found more complex patterns (i.e., repeated and longer sequences) of fixations in social than non-social scenes, both static and dynamic. There was also an age-related increase in the length of repeated fixation sequences only for social static scenes, which was independent of individual differences in orienting and attention disengagement. Our results can be interpreted as evidence for fine-tuning of infants' visual scanning skills. They selectively produce longer and more complex sequences of fixations on faces and bodies before reaching the end of the 1st year of life.

Assessment of child development in premature babies based on the ICF biopsychosocial model

BACKGROUND

The International Classification of Functionality (ICF) has been recommended to enable a broader and more holistic view of an individual's health condition. In addition, it works as an important reference for multiprofessional teams. In low-income countries, like Brazil, the attempts to systematize and incorporate the ICF model in health services has been a challenge.

AIM

The aim was to analyze the development of premature babies considering the biopsychosocial model of the ICF.

DESIGN

A longitudinal study.

SETTING

Maternity in the northeast Brazil.

POPULATION

Thirty-five premature babies were evaluated in the first stage and 20 in the second.

METHODS

Pre, perinatal, socioeconomic data and environmental factors were collected, and general movements assessed during the 38^th (±1.79) week of corrected gestational age. The Age and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3) was used to assess child development, in the 13^th (±1.50) month of life. The instruments were chosen with the objective of evaluating information necessary for the follow-up of premature infants and to represent the five domains of the ICF.

RESULTS

Of the 35 newborns initially evaluated, 20 were reassessed at 1 year of age and 70% were boys. In the function and structure domain, 55% exhibited altered general movements and 35% grade 1 intraventricular hemorrhage; in activity and participation, 15% displayed delayed communication, 20% delayed ample motor coordination, 40% fine motor coordination and problem resolution and 35% personal/social delay in the ASQ-3. Only one item of the personal factors (male sex) and function and structure domain (intraventricular hemorrhage) exhibited an association with atypical child development.

CONCLUSIONS

Given the susceptibility of premature newborn neurodevelopment and the magnitude of the biopsychosocial model of the ICF, even at this early stage of life, it was possible to observe the influence of personal factors, body function and structure domains on atypical child development.

CLINICAL REHABILITATION IMPACT

The care for the premature newborn with global look of the classification of functioning, disability and health.

Early Development of Visual Attention: Change, Stability, and Longitudinal Associations

Visual attention is a basic mechanism of information gathering and environment selection and consequently plays a fundamental role in influencing developmental trajectories. Here, we highlight evidence for predictive associations from early visual attention to emotion regulation, executive function, language and broader cognitive ability, mathematics and literacy skills, and neurodevelopmental conditions. Development of visual attention is also multifaceted and nonlinear. In daily life, core functions such as orienting, selective filtering, and processing of visual inputs are intertwined and influenced by many other cognitive components. Furthermore, the demands of an attention task vary according to the experience, motivation, and cognitive and physical constraints of participants, while the mechanisms underlying performance may change with development. Thus, markers of attention may need to be interpreted differently across development and between populations. We summarize research that has combined multiple measurements and techniques to further our understanding of visual attention development and highlight possibilities for the future.

Rapid Infant Prefrontal Cortex Development and Sensitivity to Early Environmental Experience

Over the last fifteen years, the emerging field of developmental cognitive neuroscience has described the relatively late development of prefrontal cortex in children and the relation between gradual structural changes and children's protracted development of prefrontal-dependent skills. Widespread recognition by the broader scientific community of the extended development of prefrontal cortex has led to the overwhelming perception of prefrontal cortex as a "late developing" region of the brain. However, despite its supposedly protracted development, multiple lines of research have converged to suggest that prefrontal cortex development may be particularly susceptible to individual differences in children's early environments. Recent studies demonstrate that the impacts of early adverse environments on prefrontal cortex are present very early in development: within the first year of life. This review provides a comprehensive overview of new neuroimaging evidence demonstrating that prefrontal cortex should be characterized as a "rapidly developing" region of the brain, discusses the converging impacts of early adversity on prefrontal circuits, and presents potential mechanisms via which adverse environments shape both concurrent and long-term measures of prefrontal cortex development. Given that environmentally-induced disparities are present in prefrontal cortex development within the first year of life, translational work in intervention and/or prevention science should focus on intervening early in development to take advantages of this early period of rapid prefrontal development and heightened plasticity.

Maturation constrains the effect of exposure in linking language and thought: evidence from healthy preterm infants

The power of human language rests upon its intricate links to human cognition. By 3 months of age, listening to language supports infants' ability to form object categories, a building block of cognition. Moreover, infants display a systematic shift between 3 and 4 months - a shift from familiarity to novelty preferences - in their expression of this link between language and core cognitive processes. Here, we capitalize on this tightly-timed developmental shift in fullterm infants to assess (a) whether it also appears in preterm infants and (b) whether it reflects infants' maturational status or the duration of their postnatal experience. Healthy late preterm infants (N = 22) participated in an object categorization task while listening to language. Their performance, coupled with that of fullterm infants, reveals that this developmental shift is evident in preterm infants and unfolds on the same maturational timetable as in their fullterm counterparts.

Developmental Trajectories of Hand Movements in Typical Infants and Those at Risk of Developmental Disorders: An Observational Study of Kinematics during the First Year of Life

Highlights

The kinematics of hand movements (spatial use, curvature, acceleration, and velocity) of infants with their mothers in an interactive setting

are significantly associated with age in cohorts of typical and at-risk infants

differ significantly at 5–6 months of age, depending on the context: relating either with an object or a person.

Environmental and developmental factors shape the developmental trajectories of hand movements in different cohorts: environment for infants with VIMs; stage of development for premature infants and those with West syndrome; and both factors for infants with orality disorders.

The curvature of hand movements specifically reflects atypical development in infants with West syndrome when developmental age is considered.

We aimed to discriminate between typical and atypical developmental trajectory patterns of at-risk infants in an interactive setting in this observational and longitudinal study, with the assumption that hand movements (HM) reflect preverbal communication and its disorders. We examined the developmental trajectories of HM in five cohorts of at-risk infants and one control cohort, followed from ages 2 to 10 months: 25 West syndrome (WS), 13 preterm birth (PB), 16 orality disorder (OD), 14 with visually impaired mothers (VIM), 7 early hospitalization (EH), and 19 typically developing infants (TD). Video-recorded data were collected in three different structured interactive contexts. Descriptors of the hand motion were used to examine the extent to which HM were associated with age and cohort. We obtained four principal results: (i) the kinematics of HM (spatial use, curvature, acceleration, and velocity) were significantly associated with age in all cohorts; (ii) HM significantly differed at 5–6 months of age in TD infants, depending on the context; (iii) environmental and developmental factors shaped the developmental trajectories of HM in different cohorts: environment for VIM, development for PB and WS, and both factors for OD and; (iv) the curvatures of HM showed atypical development in WS infants when developmental age was considered. These findings support the importance of using kinematics of HM to identify very early developmental disorders in an interactive context and would allow early prevention and intervention for at-risk infants.

Early executive function differences in infants born moderate-to-late preterm

Individuals who are born very preterm (<32weeks gestation) show differential development of prefrontal cortex structure, function, and dependent behaviors, including executive function (EF) skills, beginning during late infancy and extending into adulthood. Preschool-aged children born moderate-to-late preterm (PT; 32-36weeks gestation) show smaller discrepancies in EF development, but it is unclear whether these differences first emerge during the early childhood years, when EF is rapidly developing, or if they arise from alterations in complex cognitive skills measurable in late infancy. In the current study, we examined whether differences in complex attention, memory, and inhibition skills (precursor skills to EF) are altered in healthy infants born moderate-to-late PT at 9-months corrected age. Infants born PT demonstrated poorer memory at test following habituation than their full-term peers. Furthermore, lower gestational age at birth was associated with poorer performance on five of the six early EF tasks. Results indicate that even in the context of low medical and environmental risk, performance on the Bayley within the normal range, and no group-level differences in processing speed, infants born moderate-to-late PT show subtle alterations in cognitive skills presumed to be dependent on prefrontal cortex by 9-months of age, likely setting the stage for long-term differences in EF development.

Attention capacities of preterm and term born toddlers: A multi-method approach

OBJECTIVE

Many preterm children show difficulties in attention at (pre)school age. The development of attention capacities of preterm and term toddlers was compared using a longitudinal and multi-method approach at 12, 18 and 24months.

METHOD

Attention was measured for 123 preterm (32-36weeks gestation) and 101 term born children, using eye tracking (18months), observations during mother-child interaction (18months), and mother-reports (12, 18, and 24months).

RESULTS

Preterm toddlers had lower scores than term children on the eye-tracking measures of orienting and alerting. No group differences were found with observations, mother-reports, and the eye-tracking measure of executive attention. More preterm than term children had suboptimal scores on measures of the alerting system at 18months, possibly indicating difficulties in attention development.

CONCLUSION

Preterm children showed an increased risk for suboptimal functioning in alerting attention capacities, as early as at a toddler age.