Characterizing the Development of Multisensory Attention Skills: Individual Differences, Trajectories, and Relations with Outcomes

• In Event: 1-052 - Advances in the Study of Attention: Individual Differences, Developmental Trajectories, and Relations with Outcomes

Integrative Statement

Multisensory attention skills (i.e., detecting audiovisual synchrony, shifting and maintaining attention to unitary audiovisual events) are cornerstones for language and social-emotional development (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2012, 2014; Bremner et al., 2012). Until recently there have been no measures appropriate for assessing individual differences in multisensory attention skills in young children. Thus, developmental trajectories of these skills and links with later outcomes have remained poorly understood. We developed the first individual difference measures for assessing multisensory attention skills to audiovisual social and nonsocial events for infants and children. The Multisensory Attention Assessment Protocol (MAAP; Bahrick, Todd, & Soska, in press) and the Intersensory Processing Efficiency Protocol (IPEP; Bahrick, Soska, & Todd, in press) index intersensory processing (speed and accuracy of synchrony detection) and the ability to maintain and disengage attention to audiovisual events, and do so at a more fine-grained level than currently available. Together, they can characterize individual differences in multisensory attention skills, developmental trajectories of these skills, and relations between these foundational skills and developmental outcomes.

The MAAP and IPEP were administered to a longitudinal cohort of typically-developing infants (N=107) and together assess individual differences in 5 multisensory attention skills. The MAAP assesses 1) duration of attention maintenance, 2) speed of shifting, and 3) duration of intersensory matching to audiovisual social and nonsocial events. The MAAP also assesses the cost of competing stimulation (from a central distractor event) on each of these measures. The IPEP provides more fine-grained measures of 4) intersensory processing speed and 5) accuracy to selectively attend to audiovisual social and nonsocial events. Both protocols present many short trials (MAAP: 24 15-s trials; IPEP: 48 8-s trials), can be administered in the same session, and show very good reliability. Children received the MAAP and IPEP along with age-appropriate measures of language and social functioning at 3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months. In a second study, 66 rising kindergarten and rising first-grade children were administered the IPEP and an assessment of pre-literacy skills (letter names and sounds knowledge).

In our longitudinal sample, each of the multisensory attention skills indexed by the MAAP and IPEP showed evidence of change across age, with improved intersensory matching, faster shifting, and longer attention maintenance to social and nonsocial events (ps<.04) across 3-24 months. Individual differences in multisensory attention skills at 6 and 12 months predicted both social competence (ps<.05) and language outcomes (ps<.03) at 18 months. In our sample of young children, greater accuracy on the IPEP predicted greater letter names and sounds knowledge (ps<.001).

Together, these findings demonstrate that the multisensory attention skills assessed by the MAAP and IPEP show evidence of 1) meaningful individual differences, 2) improvement across age, 3) relations with language and social-emotional outcomes in infancy, and 4) relations with pre-literacy skills in early childhood. The MAAP and the IPEP show promise for characterizing individual differences in multisensory attention skills at a level of detail necessary for guiding interventions, and for characterizing developmental pathways from basic multisensory attention skills to language and social-emotional outcomes.

Authors

• James Torrence Todd, Florida International University
  Presenting Author

• Lorraine E Bahrick, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author