Contribution of household socioeconomic environment to the early development of attention control

• In Event: Longitudinal effects of early socioeconomic circumstance on infants' and children's brain and neurocognitive functions

Abstract

The endogenous, voluntary control of attention strongly develops during infancy and toddlerhood (Hendry et al., 2019) and is central to babies’ learning and self-regulation (Crockenberg & Leerkes, 2004; Harman et al., 1997). During childhood, attentional development has been found to be influenced by environmental factors (Farah et al., 2017), although information of their earlier impact is yet limited. In the current research, we studied the contribution of the family socioeconomic status (SES) and household environment (chaos) on emerging attentional control from infancy to toddlerhood. An initial group of 142 6-mo-old infants were tested with diverse attention control tasks, and longitudinally followed at 9 (n = 122), and 16-18 months (n = 91). The attention control protocol included eye-tracking tasks intended to test endogenous attention processes such as disengagement and anticipated orientation (orienting latency and failure to disengage in the Gap-Overlap task, Hood & Atkinson, 1993; anticipatory orientation and perseverative errors in a switching task, Kóvacs & Mehler, 2009) as well as attention flexibility and inhibitory control (ECITT; Holmboe et al., 2021). In addition, parents reported about familial SES and home chaos.
Results of LMM with Maximum Likelihood estimation showed a robust age-related changes in speed of attention orientation in the absence of distracting, competing stimulation (reduced orienting latency in the gap, F(2, 63.37) = 151.84, p < .001, but not in the overlap condition, F(2, 62.55) = 1.94, p = .15), together with better attention disengagement (reduced disengagement failure with age, F(2, 189.14) = 3.44, p = .03). Likewise, we found the expected increased attentional flexibility with age (reduced perseverative errors between 9 and 16-18 months of age, F(2, 60.70) = 7.11, p < .01). Moreover, hierarchical regression models showed that a higher home SES (β = -.29, p = .04, 95% CI [-.72, -.01]) and chaos at 6 months (β = -.38, p < .01, 95% CI [-.05, -.01]) significantly contributed to better development of disengagement skills at 16-18 months. In addition, a higher household SES at 6 months also contributed to the early development of cognitive flexibility, as indicated by performance of the switching task at 9 months (β = -.48, p < .01, 95% CI [-30.86, -7.08]), yet not for the oldest age.

Increased attentional flexibility and voluntary control of attention in babies around the end of the first years was already suggested by previous studies (Clearfield & Niman, 2012), and was replicated in our study using eye-tracking and new behavioral protocols. In addition, our results show a significant contribution of household SES factors to the early development of attentional control, with a stronger impact on disengagement and attentional flexibility. These results suggest that the brain circuits underlying the development of attentional control are subject to the influence of early experiences. Household chaos appears to be detrimental to the development of attention control over orientation, whereas SES resources show a beneficial contribution. Future studies are needed to better understand the particular conditions linked to SES that are key to the early development of babies’ attention.

Authors

• Sebastián Moyano
  Presenting Author

• Alana Daly, Universidad de Granada

• Josué Rico-Picó

• Angela Conejero, Universidad de Granada

• MÁngeles Ballesteros-Duperon

• M. Rosario Rueda