Early development of visual attention in infants in rural Malawi. Issue 5 (12th November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pyykkö, Juha; Forssman, Linda; Maleta, Kenneth; Ashorn, Per; Ashorn, Ulla; Leppänen, Jukka M.
• Other Names: Jensen Sarah K. G. guestEditor.; Obradović Jelena guestEditor.; Nelson Charles A. guestEditor.
• Is Part Of: Developmental science. Volume 22:Issue 5(2019)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2018-11-12
• Subjects: early development -- eye tracking -- face perception -- gestational age -- low‐resource -- visual attention; Developmental psychology -- Periodicals; Psychology, Comparative -- Periodicals; 155
• DOI: 10.1111/desc.12761
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1363-755X

Abstract

Abstract : Automated eye tracking techniques demonstrated attentional capabilities of infants from rural Malawi. Infants exhibited selectively enhanced attentional bias for faces. Individual variations in infants' attentional capacities were moderately stable across tests, but not related to common risk factors. Abstract: Eye tracking research has shown that infants develop a repertoire of attentional capacities during the first year. The majority of studies examining the early development of attention comes from Western, high‐resource countries. We examined visual attention in a heterogeneous sample of infants in rural Malawi ( N = 312–376, depending on analysis). Infants were assessed with eye‐tracking‐based tests that targeted visual orienting, anticipatory looking, and attention to faces at 7 and 9 months. Consistent with prior research, infants exhibited active visual search for salient visual targets, anticipatory saccades to predictable events, and a robust attentional bias for happy and fearful faces. Individual variations in these processes had low to moderate odd‐even split‐half and test‐retest reliability. There were no consistent associations between attention measures and gestational age, nutritional status, or characteristics of the rearing environment (i.e., maternal cognition, psychosocial well‐being, socioeconomic status, and care practices). The results replicate infants' early attentional biases in a large, unique sample, and suggest that some of these biases (e.g., bias for faces) are pronounced in low‐resource settings. The results provided no evidence that the initial manifestation of infants' attentional capacities is associated with risk factors that are common in low‐resource environments.