Cognitive flexibility in 12-month-old preterm and term infants is associated with neurobehavioural development in 18-month-olds

早産児の注意の切り替えの弱さは後の認知発達と関連する --アイトラッカーを用いた注意機能の定量的分析から--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-01-11.There is growing evidence that preterm children are at an increased risk of poor executive functioning, which underlies behavioural and attention problems. Previous studies have suggested that early cognitive flexibility is a possible predictor of later executive function; however, how it develops in infancy and relates to the later neurobehavioural outcomes is still unclear in the preterm population. Here, we conducted a longitudinal study to investigate oculomotor response shifting in 27 preterm and 25 term infants at 12 months and its relationship with general cognitive development and effortful control, which is a temperamental aspect closely associated with executive function, at 18 months. We found that moderate to late preterm and term infants significantly inhibited previously rewarded look responses, while very preterm infants did not show significant inhibition of perseverative looking at 12 months. Moreover, lower inhibition of perseverative looking was significantly associated with lower general cognitive development and attentional shifting at 18 months. These findings suggest that the early atypical patterns of oculomotor response shifting may be a behavioural marker for predicting a higher risk of negative neurobehavioural outcomes, including attention-related problems in preterm children

New light on neurocognitive processes linked to autism and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder in childhood : studies of eye movements in twins

Visual attention and oculomotor response inhibition have been associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) respectively. The aim of this thesis was to increase our knowledge about these cognitive functions relevant to ASD and ADHD in early infancy and childhood using eye tracking and twin modelling. Study 1 assessed the relative contribution of genetic and environmental influences to attentional networks and visual disengagement (using the gap overlap task) in a sample of twins from the general population, aged 9-14 years. It also assessed whether visual disengagement was associated with autistic traits. Gaze shift latencies across conditions were driven by shared genetic factors. Additionally, there were unique genetic influences to gaze shift latencies in the gap condition. In line with previous work, autistic traits were found to be heritable. There was no association between visual disengagement and autistic traits. Study 2 investigated the relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to oculomotor response inhibition (using the antisaccade task) and the degree to which oculomotor response inhibition was associated with ADHD traits in the same twin sample. Oculomotor response inhibition in the form of premature anticipatory eye movements was heritable and associated to parent rated inattentive traits. This association was partially due to shared genetic factors. Study 3 investigated how visual disengagement relates to other cognitive developmental processes and behaviors, socioeconomic status and biological sex in early infancy. Gaze shift latencies in the overlap, baseline and gap conditions, of the Gap Overlap task, differed as a function of socioeconomic status and sex. No other associations between visual attention and developmental measures were observed. Thus, in summary, while these findings do not support neither a phenotypic nor a genetic link between visual disengagement and ASD, they support such association between oculomotor response inhibition and inattention (a core component of ADHD). Finally, these findings highlight the influence of sociodemographic factors on individual differences in visual attention in early infancy, thus underscoring the importance of understanding all sources of variation in attentional functions in childhood

Eye movement sequences during simple versus complex information processing of scenes in autism spectrum disorder

Minshew and Goldstein (1998) postulated that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a disorder of complex information processing. The current study was designed to investigate this hypothesis. Participants with and without ASD completed two scene perception tasks: a simple “spot the difference” task, where they had to say which one of a pair of pictures had a detail missing, and a complex “which one's weird” task, where they had to decide which one of a pair of pictures looks “weird”. Participants with ASD did not differ from TD participants in their ability to accurately identify the target picture in both tasks. However, analysis of the eye movement sequences showed that participants with ASD viewed scenes differently from normal controls exclusively for the complex task. This difference in eye movement patterns, and the method used to examine different patterns, adds to the knowledge base regarding eye movements and ASD. Our results are in accordance with Minshew and Goldstein's theory that complex, but not simple, information processing is impaired in ASD.<br/

Training methods for facial image comparison: a literature review

This literature review was commissioned to explore the psychological literature relating to facial image comparison with a particular emphasis on whether individuals can be trained to improve performance on this task. Surprisingly few studies have addressed this question directly. As a consequence, this review has been extended to cover training of face recognition and training of different kinds of perceptual comparisons where we are of the opinion that the methodologies or findings of such studies are informative. The majority of studies of face processing have examined face recognition, which relies heavily on memory. This may be memory for a face that was learned recently (e.g. minutes or hours previously) or for a face learned longer ago, perhaps after many exposures (e.g. friends, family members, celebrities). Successful face recognition, irrespective of the type of face, relies on the ability to retrieve the to-berecognised face from long-term memory. This memory is then compared to the physically present image to reach a recognition decision. In contrast, in face matching task two physical representations of a face (live, photographs, movies) are compared and so long-term memory is not involved. Because the comparison is between two present stimuli rather than between a present stimulus and a memory, one might expect that face matching, even if not an easy task, would be easier to do and easier to learn than face recognition. In support of this, there is evidence that judgment tasks where a presented stimulus must be judged by a remembered standard are generally more cognitively demanding than judgments that require comparing two presented stimuli Davies &amp; Parasuraman, 1982; Parasuraman &amp; Davies, 1977; Warm and Dember, 1998). Is there enough overlap between face recognition and matching that it is useful to look at the literature recognition? No study has directly compared face recognition and face matching, so we turn to research in which people decided whether two non-face stimuli were the same or different. In these studies, accuracy of comparison is not always better when the comparator is present than when it is remembered. Further, all perceptual factors that were found to affect comparisons of simultaneously presented objects also affected comparisons of successively presented objects in qualitatively the same way. Those studies involved judgments about colour (Newhall, Burnham &amp; Clark, 1957; Romero, Hita &amp; Del Barco, 1986), and shape (Larsen, McIlhagga &amp; Bundesen, 1999; Lawson, Bülthoff &amp; Dumbell, 2003; Quinlan, 1995). Although one must be cautious in generalising from studies of object processing to studies of face processing (see, e.g., section comparing face processing to object processing), from these kinds of studies there is no evidence to suggest that there are qualitative differences in the perceptual aspects of how recognition and matching are done. As a result, this review will include studies of face recognition skill as well as face matching skill. The distinction between face recognition involving memory and face matching not involving memory is clouded in many recognition studies which require observers to decide which of many presented faces matches a remembered face (e.g., eyewitness studies). And of course there are other forensic face-matching tasks that will require comparison to both presented and remembered comparators (e.g., deciding whether any person in a video showing a crowd is the target person). For this reason, too, we choose to include studies of face recognition as well as face matching in our revie

Individual differences in infant oculomotor behavior during the viewing of complex naturalistic scenes

Little research hitherto has examined how individual differences in attention, as assessed using standard experimental paradigms, relate to individual differences in how attention is spontaneously allocated in more naturalistic contexts. Here, we analyzed the time intervals between refoveating eye movements (fixation durations) while typically developing 11-month-old infants viewed a 90-min battery ranging from complex dynamic to noncomplex static materials. The same infants also completed experimental assessments of cognitive control, psychomotor reaction times (RT), processing speed (indexed via peak look during habituation), and arousal (indexed via tonic pupil size). High test–retest reliability was found for fixation duration, across testing sessions and across types of viewing material. Increased cognitive control and increased arousal were associated with reduced variability in fixation duration. For fixations to dynamic stimuli, in which a large proportion of saccades may be exogenously cued, we found that psychomotor RT measures were most predictive of mean fixation duration; for fixations to static stimuli, in contrast, in which there is less exogenous attentional capture, we found that psychomotor RT did not predict performance, but that measures of cognitive control and arousal did. The implications of these findings for understanding the development of attentional control in naturalistic settings are discussed

Infant and toddler precursors of attentional processes in Fragile X syndrome: A neurodevelopmental perspective

With the recent sequencing of the human genome, the following question has attracted much interest: can the function of single genes be linked to specific neural and cognitive processes? Within this context, developmental disorders of known genetic origins have been used as naturally-occurring models to link the function (and dysfunction) of genes with cognition. Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is a genetically inherited disorder associated with the silencing of a single gene involved in experience-dependent changes at glutamatergic synapses. In adulthood, it is associated with core attentional difficulties accompanied by seemingly proficient visuo-perception, but the profile of infants and toddlers has not been investigated. In this thesis, fragile X syndrome is used as a tool to investigate how initial changes in a generalised property of all cortical neurones can nonetheless result, in the adult, in core difficulties in the control of attention. I argue that, even in disorders associated with the silencing of a single gene like FXS, the answer requires a developmental approach. Chapter 1 delineates a theoretical distinction between endogenous and exogenous influences on attentional control, whereas Chapter 2 defines methodological issues in assessing atypical attention, such as tools for the assessment of general developmental level and choices of control groups. Part II focuses on tasks tapping endogenous attention control. In particular, Chapters 3 and 4 examine the control of eye-movements and manual response conflict in infants and toddlers with FXS and in typically developing controls. In contrast, Part III concentrates on the exogenous effects of sudden peripheral onsets on visual orienting (Chapter 5) and of the perceptual salience of targets during visual search (Chapter 6). Finally, Part IV traces longitudinal changes in visual search performance. The findings suggest that, like adults with the syndrome, infant and toddlers with FXS display striking deficits in endogenous attention. However, unlike adults, infants are also characterised by atypical exogenous influences on attention and longitudinal changes in performance point to complex developmental relationships between early and later measures of attention. The findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for fragile X syndrome and other developmental disorders affecting attention. They challenge the notion of direct genotype-phenotype mappings that fail to take development into account

Developmental pathways to autism: a review of prospective studies of infants at risk

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication, and the presence of restrictive and repetitive behaviors. Symptoms of ASD likely emerge from a complex interaction between pre-existing neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities and the child's environment, modified by compensatory skills and protective factors. Prospective studies of infants at high familial risk for ASD (who have an older sibling with a diagnosis) are beginning to characterize these developmental pathways to the emergence of clinical symptoms. Here, we review the range of behavioral and neurocognitive markers for later ASD that have been identified in high-risk infants in the first years of life. We discuss theoretical implications of emerging patterns, and identify key directions for future work, including potential resolutions to several methodological challenges for the field. Mapping how ASD unfolds from birth is critical to our understanding of the developmental mechanisms underlying this disorder. A more nuanced understanding of developmental pathways to ASD will help us not only to identify children who need early intervention, but also to improve the range of interventions available to them

Desarrollo de la inhibición: comparación de medidas neuropsicológicas y de seguimiento de ojos

Inhibition is the ability to stop an automatic response when a stimulus is presented. It is one main component of executive function models. Few studies have evaluated the development of this ability’s in children between five and eight years of age using eye tracking measures. The first objective of this exploratory study is to evaluate the performance difference of younger compared to older children. The second objective is to evaluate if inhibition assessed via three different neuropsychological tests develops at a similar rate as inhibition assessed via two eye tracking tasks. Forty-six children aged 5.7 to 8.4 years completed both types of tests. Results show that one neuropsychological test was sensitive to the children’ increasing inhibition ability, while both eye tracking tests were. Additionally, scores from one eye tracking task correlated with scores from one neuropsychological test. Possible explanations of moderate relations between tasks are discussed.La inhibición es la capacidad de detener una respuesta automática. Es una de las funciones ejecutivas principales. Pocos estudios han evaluado su desarrollo en niños de cinco a ocho años utilizando pruebas de seguimiento de ojos. Este estudio exploratorio tiene, como primer objetivo, evaluar la diferencia de rendimiento entre los más jóvenes y los mayores. El segundo objetivo es evaluar si la inhibición se desarrolla a un ritmo similar en tres pruebas neuropsicológicas y dos pruebas de seguimiento de ojos. Cuarenta y seis niños, de 5 años y 8 meses a 8 años y 5 meses, realizaron ambos tipos de pruebas. Los resultados muestran que una de las pruebas neuropsicológicas y ambas pruebas de seguimiento de ojos fueron sensibles a la mejora de la inhibición. Además, resultados de una prueba de seguimiento de ojos y de una prueba neuropsicológica estaban correlacionados. Se discuten las explicaciones posibles de las relaciones entre las tareas

Disentangling the mechanisms underlying infant fixation durations in scene perception:A computational account

The goal of this article is to investigate the unexplored mechanisms underlying the development of saccadic control in infancy by determining the generalizability and potential limitations of extending the CRISP theoretical framework and computational model of fixation durations (FDs) in adult scene-viewing to infants. The CRISP model was used to investigate the underlying mechanisms modulating FDs in 6-month-olds by applying the model to empirical eye-movement data gathered from groups of infants and adults during free-viewing of naturalistic and semi-naturalistic videos. Participants also performed a gap-overlap task to measure their disengagement abilities. Results confirmed the CRISP model’s applicability to infant data. Specifically, model simulations support the view that infant saccade programming is completed in two stages: an initial labile stage, followed by a non-labile stage. Moreover, results from the empirical data and simulation studies highlighted the influence of the material viewed on the FD distributions in infants and adults, as well as the impact that the developmental state of the oculomotor system can have on saccade programming and execution at 6 months. The present work suggests that infant FDs reflect on-line perceptual and cognitive activity in a similar way to adults, but that the individual developmental state of the oculomotor system affects this relationship at 6 months. Furthermore, computational modeling filled the gaps of psychophysical studies and allowed the effects of these two factors on FDs to be simulated in infant data providing greater insights into the development of oculomotor and attentional control than can be gained from behavioral results alone