Poster #35 - Relations Between Motor Development and Neural Correlates of Action Processing at 9 and 18 Months

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Recent research has revealed that infants’ motor skills are reflected in certain neural responses when they perform actions, and that infants, like adults, show a similar neural pattern when observing others’ actions – especially those at which they are skilled (see Cuevas, Cannon, Yoo, & Fox, 2013). In particular, an EEG measure associated with motor system activity (alpha suppression over sensorimotor areas, conventionally referred to as “mu-ERD”) has been found when infants engage in actions and when they observe others’ actions, a pattern also seen in adults. Unlike adults, infants’ motor capacities are undergoing rapid developmental change, and an open question is how the neural correlates of action processing relate to motor development during infancy.
To investigate this question, we collected neural data and a measure of motor development from 9-month-old infants and collected the same motor development measure when the infants turned 18 months. At 9 months, EEG data were collected as infants produced grasping actions and as they viewed an adult’s grasping actions; mu-ERD was identified as the average baseline-corrected power in the Alpha frequency (6-9 Hz) range of electrodes overlaying motor areas and time-locked to the reach-grasp motion of the infant or adult experimenter for the execution or observation conditions, respectively. Motor development was assessed using the Early Motor Questionnaire (EMQ; Libertus & Landa, 2013), a validated parent-report measure that provides data on three subscales: gross motor, fine motor, and visual reception. Data collection at the second timepoint is ongoing, with 31 of 52 infants having been tested at 18 months. Of the 20 infants who provided useable neural data at 9 months, 19 provided an EMQ at 9 months and 14 of those infants provided an updated EMQ at 18 months. Disregarding neural data, 24 infants provided the EMQ at both timepoints.
Preliminary analyses reveal relations between mu-ERD during both action execution and action observation and infants’ motor development. Mu-ERD during action execution at 9 months was significantly related to the fine motor subscale of the EMQ both at 9 and 18 months, and mu-ERD during action observation at 9 months was significantly predicted by overall EMQ score and by the fine motor and visual reception subscales at 9 months. Further relationships between EMQ subscales at both age-points and mu-ERD are depicted in Table 2. Relationships within the EMQ (across subscales and age-points) are displayed in Table 1.
The present study demonstrates that EEG measures of infants’ action processing are correlated to parent-report measures of motor development, especially fine motor skills, and that these neural measures may be used to predict motor abilities in toddlerhood.

Authors

• Tess Fulcher, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Marlene Meyer, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda Woodward, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author