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- Astor, Kim, et al.
(författare)
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Social and emotional contexts predict the development of gaze following in early infancy
- 2020
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Ingår i: Royal Society Open Science. - : The Royal Society. - 2054-5703. ; 7:9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The development of gaze following begins in early infancy and its developmental foundation has been under heavy debate. Using a longitudinal design (N = 118), we demonstrate that attachment quality predicts individual differences in the onset of gaze following, at six months of age, and that maternal postpartum depression predicts later gaze following, at 10 months. In addition, we report longitudinal stability in gaze following from 6 to 10 months. A full path model (using attachment, maternal depression and gaze following at six months) accounted for 21% of variance in gaze following at 10 months. These results suggest an experience-dependent development of gaze following, driven by the infant's own motivation to interact and engage with others (the social-first perspective).
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| 2. |
- Forssman, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing the Feasibility of Using Eye Tracking to Study Infants’ Cognitive Functioning in Rural Malawi
- 2015
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- BackgroundChildren growing up in low-income countries are at an increased risk for exposure to adverse contextual factors that may affect their cognitive development early in life. Yet, the prevalence and specific nature of cognitive problems are still poorly understood given a lack of objective, non-invasive, and field-friendly techniques for assessing early cognitive functioning in low-resource settings. In an effort to help address this gap, we carried out a study to evaluate the feasibility of using eye tracking to assess infants’ cognitive functioning in a low-income setting.MethodsA battery of eye tracking tests were used to assess basic cognitive functions, such as anticipatory looking, sequence learning, and perception of facial expressions, of 39 Finnish and 37 Malawian infants 9 months of age. To evaluate the feasibility of using the eye tracking method in Malawi, we measured and compared the acceptability of the eye tracking method (the participants’ mothers’ appreciation of the method) and quality of the eye tracking data collected from the Malawian site to that of data collected from the Finnish site. The following conditions needed to be met in order for the method to be defined as feasible: (1) a proportion of Malawian participants similar to that of Finnish participants had to be able to complete the whole assessment, (2) a proportion of participating Malawian mothers similar to that of Finnish mothers had to report acceptance of the method, and (3) the eye tracking data quality in terms of attrition rate and proportion of valid trials had to be similar at the two sites (Malawi and Finland) and in parity with previous infancy eye tracking studies (i.e., attrition rate around 20–35% or lower, based on Ambrosini et al. 2013, Oakes and Ellis 2013, and Watanabe et al. 2012, and proportion of valid trials in each eye tracking task at greater than 70%, based on Forssman, Wass, and Leppänen 2014 and Leppänen et al. 2014).ResultsThe majority of Finnish (95%) and Malawian (92%) infants were able to complete the whole assessment. At both sites, 95% or more of the participating mothers reported acceptability of the method. Examination of eye tracking data quality between the Finnish and Malawian testing sites showed similar patterns, although the overall completion rate (Finland: 94.9%; Malawi: 91.9%) and the overall proportion of valid trials (Finland: 79.5%; Malawi: 71%) were slightly in favor of the Finnish sample. There were however no significant differences in task-specific data attrition rates between the two samples (p = .141–.946) and the attrition rates at both sites was equivalent to or better than the attrition rates reported in previous eye tracking studies with infants of similar age.ConclusionsThe consistency of data retention and test acceptance rate between the Finnish and Malawian samples demonstrates the feasibility of eye tracking-based assessments of infants’ cognition in low-resource settings. Based on the results from this pilot test, we believe that eye tracking is a promising tool for assessing early cognitive functions in Malawi and other low-income countries. However, further research is still needed to establish the validity of early-emerging cognitive markers as predictors of long-term health outcomes in childhood.
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| 3. |
- Forssman, Linda
(författare)
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Attention and the Early Development of Cognitive Control : Infants’ and Toddlers’ Performance on the A-not-B task
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the first years of life there is a dramatic development of cognitive abilities supporting cognitive control of behavior. This development allows the child to make future-oriented predictions and to increasingly act in a goal-directed manner. The early development of cognitive control is presumably closely tied to the maturation of the attention systems. Further, attentional control processes have been suggested to be the unifying construct underlying cognitive control in both children and adults. The general aim of the present thesis was to further our understanding of the early development of cognitive control. This aim was approached by examining the attention processes underlying cognitive control in infancy and toddlerhood, with a particular focus on age-related improvements in attentional control. This thesis consists of three studies that have used the A-not-B paradigm to investigated infants’ and toddlers’ ability to search for a hidden object or to correctly anticipate the reappearance of a hidden object. The A-not-B paradigm is one of few well-studied paradigms for research on the early development of cognitive control and this paradigm involves conflict resolution and requires a flexible shift of response set to achieve a goal.Study I of this thesis examined individual differences in 10-month-olds’ ability to search for a hidden object in a manual A-not-B task. We investigated the infants’ search behavior, both in terms looking and reaching responses, the relation between individual differences in performance on A and B trials, and also the relation between the two response modalities.Study II used eye tracking and focused on the role of attentional demand on 10- and 12-month-olds’ ability to anticipate the reappearance of a hidden object. This study intended to clarify age-related improvements, particularly in relation to the ability to resist visually distracting information that interfered with the task at hand.Study III also employed an eye tracker to measure 18-month-olds’ predictive eye movements in anticipation of a hidden object under conditions marked by different attention demands. This study not only investigated the toddlers’ ability to overcome a visual distractor, but also their ability to keep a representation in actively in mind over different delays. In addition, the 18-month-olds’ performance was compared to that of an adult group to shed further light on the development of attentional control in children.In conclusion, this thesis demonstrated that important age-related improvements in cognitive control take place by the end of the first year of life and between 12 and 18 months of age. More specifically, with increasing age, the children were able to resolve higher levels of conflict thereby demonstrating improvements in attentional control. In interpreting the present data, we argue that this development is gradual, developing from variable to stable and also that the attentional control process is best described as continuous rather dichotomous in infancy and toddlerhood. Based on our findings, future research should be motivated to examine changes in attentional control processes in relation to the early development of cognitive development.
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| 7. |
- Forssman, Linda, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Cognitive Functioning and Family Risk Factors in Relation to Symptom Behaviors of ADHD and ODD in Adolescents
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of Attention Disorders. - : SAGE Publications. - 1087-0547 .- 1557-1246. ; 16:4, s. 284-294
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: In this study, the authors investigated whether ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) behaviors share associations with problems in cognitive functioning and/or family risk factors in adolescence. This was done by examining independent as well as specific associations of cognitive functioning and family risk factors with ADHD and ODD behaviors. Method: A sample of 120 adolescents from the general population was assessed on various cognitive tasks. ADHD and ODD behaviors were measured through parental and teacher ratings based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edition) criteria. Parents and adolescents provided information regarding measures of family risk factors. Results: The results show that only cognitive functioning was associated with ADHD behaviors, and family risk factors were, independent of cognitive functioning, associated with ODD behaviors. Conclusion: These results suggest that cognitive performance bears a specific significance for ADHD behaviors, whereas family risk factors have specific importance for ODD behaviors.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Forssman, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Eighteen-month-olds' ability to make gaze predictions following distraction or a long delay
- 2014
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Ingår i: Infant Behavior and Development. - : Elsevier BV. - 0163-6383 .- 1879-0453. ; 37:2, s. 225-234
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The abilities to flexibly allocate attention, select between conflicting stimuli, and make anticipatory gaze movements are important for young children's exploration and learning about their environment. These abilities constitute voluntary control of attention and show marked improvements in the second year of a child's life. Here we investigate the effects of visual distraction and delay on 18-month-olds' ability to predict the location of an occluded target in an experiment that requires switching of attention, and compare their performance to that of adults. Our results demonstrate that by 18 months of age children can readily overcome a previously learned response, even under a condition that involves visual distraction, but have difficulties with correctly updating their prediction when presented with a longer time delay. Further, the experiment shows that, overall, the 18-month-olds' allocation of visual attention is similar to that of adults, the primary difference being that adults demonstrate a superior ability to maintain attention on task and update their predictions over a longer time period. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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| 10. |
- Forssman, Linda, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Eye-tracking-based assessment of cognitive function in low-resource settings
- 2017
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Ingår i: Archives of Disease in Childhood. - : BMJ. - 0003-9888 .- 1468-2044. ; 102:4, s. 301-302
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Early development of neurocognitive functions in infants can be compromised by poverty, malnutrition and lack of adequate stimulation. Optimal management of neurodevelopmental problems in infants requires assessment tools that can be used early in life, and are objective and applicable across economic, cultural and educational settings.Objective and design: The present study examined the feasibility of infrared eye tracking as a novel and highly automated technique for assessing visual-orienting and sequence-learning abilities as well as attention to facial expressions in young (9-month-old) infants. Techniques piloted in a high-resource laboratory setting in Finland (N=39) were subsequently field-tested in a community health centre in rural Malawi (N=40).Results: Parents' perception of the acceptability of the method (Finland 95%, Malawi 92%) and percentages of infants completing the whole eye-tracking test (Finland 95%, Malawi 90%) were high, and percentages of valid test trials (Finland 69-85%, Malawi 68-73%) satisfactory at both sites. Test completion rates were slightly higher for eye tracking (90%) than traditional observational tests (87%) in Malawi. The predicted response pattern indicative of specific cognitive function was replicated in Malawi, but Malawian infants exhibited lower response rates and slower processing speed across tasks.Conclusions: High test completion rates and the replication of the predicted test patterns in a novel environment in Malawi support the feasibility of eye tracking as a technique for assessing infant development in low-resource setting. Further research is needed to the test-retest stability and predictive validity of the eye-tracking scores in low-income settings.
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