Poster #9 - Infant Attention, Preschool Executive Function, and School Readiness

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Infant attention is conceptualized to underlie later executive function (EF) development (e.g., Colombo & Cheatham, 2006; Reynolds & Romano, 2016). Empirical evidence concurs; infants with more efficient information processing (e.g., shorter look durations; Colombo et al., 2010) have higher EF composite scores during early and middle childhood (Cuevas & Bell, 2014; Rose et al., 2012). It may be, however, that more efficient processing during infancy not only results in higher EF in early childhood, but more coherent EF patterns as well. Although there is evidence of a unity (one-factor) model of EF during early childhood (Visu-Petra et al., 2012; Wiebe et al., 2008, 2011), there is also evidence of no unity (Camerota et al., 2018). We hypothesized that a unitary EF model would be linked with optimal infant attention skills. Given the strong associations between preschool EF and school readiness (Blair & Raver, 2015; Welsh et al., 2010), we also investigated relations between infant attention, preschool EF unity, and school readiness. We hypothesized that the association between preschool EF and school readiness would differ as a function of the efficiency of infant attention skills, much like the link between developmental delays in EF and lower school readiness (Willoughby et al., 2017).
Participants were 219 children recruited for a larger longitudinal study of cognitive development. At 5 months, infants were familiarized with a puppet and, based on their longest consecutive look, were divided into two groups: Long Lookers (LL) group: durations above 7.47 seconds (median peak look), and Short Lookers (SL) group: durations at or below 7.47 seconds (Colombo et al., 1991). At 48 months, seven commonly-used EF measures were administered: Dimensional Card Change Sort (DCCS), Gift Delay, Pig/Bull, Tongue Task, Visual Search, Working Memory subscale of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function Preschool Version (BRIEF-P), and Inhibitory Control subscale of the Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart et al., 2001). Children also completed the Applied Problems and Letter-Word Identification subscales from the Woodcock-Johnson III as measures of school readiness.
Separate confirmatory factor analyses were conducted for each infant attention group (SL, LL) using MPlus to assess the fit of the unitary EF model, as well as the model examining the associations between EF and school readiness measures. Residualized EF scores were created by covarying out vocabulary ability (PPVT) and maternal education level. SL group: Both models were an excellent fit for the data (see Table 1), with all EF variables loading significantly on the latent factor, and a significant path from latent EF to school readiness (see Table 2 for all loadings). LL group: Both models were a poor fit (see Table 1), with only 3 EF variables loading significantly on the latent factor, and a nonsignificant path from EF to school readiness (see Table 2 for all loadings).
Findings support the idea that individual differences in infant attention efficiency influences the organization of preschool EF and, in turn, the association with school readiness. These data suggest that individual differences during infancy are the foundation for later development (Bornstein, 2014).

Authors

• Jess H Kraybill, Western Connecticut State University
  Presenting Author

• Martha Ann Bell, Virginia Tech
  Non-Presenting Author