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Poster #211 - Low Naturalistic Attention Shifting as a Risk Factor for Internalizing Symptoms in Behaviorally Inhibited Children

Fri, March 22, 12:45 to 2:00pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Executive functioning (EF) works to control prepotent responses, allowing an individual to direct behavior towards higher-order goals (Diamond, 2006). EF can be divided into three dissociable components: Set shifting, working memory, and inhibition (Miyake et al., 2000). Higher levels of attentional shifting in behaviorally inhibited (BI) children, a group at increased risk for internalizing disorders (Chronis-Tuscano et al., 2009), may act to decrease risk for internalizing problems (White et al., 2011).

Variations in EF, particularly attention shifting, may be evident in visual orienting (Amso & Scerif, 2015). This study investigates whether naturalistic attention shifting, measured using mobile eye-tracking, moderates the relation between BI and internalizing symptoms.

Data collection is ongoing (N-to-Date: 76, Mage=6.05 years, 21 BI). To date, eye-tracking coding is complete for 25 participants (Mage=6.15 years, 10 BI). Children completed the Stranger Working episode of the Laboratory Assessment Battery (Goldsmith et al., 1994) while wearing a head-mounted eye-tracker. A female stranger entered the room with the marbles that the child would need to play Hungry Hungry Hippos. She “works” silently for 2 minutes, and then departs. Parents rated children’s BI using the Behavioral Inhibition Questionnaire
(Bishop et al., 2003), and internalizing symptoms using the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000).

A novel measure of naturalistic attention shifting utilizes proportions of total looking time to salient areas of interest (AOIs) relative to total looking time in the episode. To successfully acquire the marbles, the child must ask for them. Flexibly orienting attention to the marbles and/or stranger while still attending to the surroundings can support this over-arching goal. Hence, AOIs were categorized as “goal-relevant,” including the stranger and the marbles, or “goal-avoidant,” including the toy and the stranger’s reflection in the room’s mirror.

On average, children provided usable eye-tracking data for 67.8% of the episode (SD=25.3). Three participants were excluded for usable gaze data more than 2SDs below the mean, leaving 22 participants in the analysis (Mage=6.11 years, 9 BI).

We used Poisson regression to examine the relation between BI and proportions of looking time to goal-relevant and avoidant AOIs as predictors for internalizing symptoms. Looking time to goal-relevant and goal-avoidant AOIs were inversely related, b=-1.06, p<.001. As expected, BI was related to internalizing symptoms, b=0.02, p=.02. There were also significant two-way interactions between BI and proportion of looking time to goal-avoidant AOIs, b=0.08, p=.02 (Figure 1), and between BI and proportion of looking time to goal-relevant AOIs, b=0.13, p=.02 (Figure 2).

Simple slopes analysis indicate that as BI increases, average levels/levels +1SD above the mean of looking time to both goal-relevant and goal-avoidant AOIs are significantly associated with increased internalizing symptoms. Allocating disproportionately higher levels of attention to any single category of AOI, regardless of relevance to a higher-order goal, may indicate lower levels of flexible orienting between stimuli and therefore lower levels of attention shifting (Morales et al., 2017). These findings are consistent with previous literature supporting protective effects of flexible attentional shifting. The study highlights the importance and feasibility of measuring EF in more naturalistic settings.

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