Poster #1 - Longitudinal Development of Infant Distractibility from Social Events from 3 to 36 Months of Age

• In Event: Poster Session 05

Abstract

Poor attentional control (i.e., distractibility) has been shown to negatively influence language and social-emotional outcomes in infants (Dixon & Salley, 2007; Salley et al., 2013; Graziano et al., 2011). Distractibility refers to an infant’s ability to maintain attention to a target in the presence of a distractor (Salley et al., 2013). However, little research has assessed the developmental trajectory of infant distractibility (but see Kannass et al., 2006). The Multisensory Attention Assessment (MAAP: Bahrick et al., 2018) provides a fine-grained measure of distractibility by assessing looks away from audiovisual social or nonsocial events to an irrelevant distractor stimulus. Previously we demonstrated that distractibility from social (but not from nonsocial) events at 12 months predicted infant receptive vocabulary at 18 months (Testa et al., under review). This highlights the importance of investigating developmental change in distractibility across infancy. Here we assessed the developmental trajectory of infant distractibility in the presence of social events from 3 to 36 months of age using the MAAP. The MAAP was administered to 104 infants longitudinally when infants were 3, 6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months of age. Each trial of the MAAP begins with a silent 3-second central visual distractor (morphing geometric shapes) followed by two lateral events depicting women speaking (Figure 1). The visual movements of one lateral event are synchronous with its natural soundtrack while the other is asynchronous. For half the trials (distractor trials), the central distractor event remains on during the lateral events. Infant distractibility is measured during the distractor trials as the proportion of total looking time to the central distractor divided by the looking time to all three events (synchronous, asynchronous, distractor). We assessed longitudinal trajectories of child distractibility in the context of social events using SEM-based latent growth curve modeling. Distractibility exhibited a significant nonlinear decrease across age. There was a steep decrease in child distractibility from 3 to 6 months of age followed by a more slight decrease from 6 to 36 months of age (Figure 2). A spline model exhibited good model fit (X2 = 8.74, p = .73) and was a significant improvement relative to a linear model which showed poor fit (X2 = 51.22, p < .001). Findings characterize the development of infant to distractibility in the context of social events across the first three years of life. The most rapid improvement in distractibility occurred between 3 to 6 months with smaller improvements from 6 to 36 months of age. Findings from this study may inform the development of attentional interventions that seek to reduce infant distractibility by identifying periods of the most developmental change and the most effective age during which to implement interventions. Future research will assess the ability of individual longitudinal trajectories of distractibility in the context of social events to predict language and social emotional outcomes.

Authors

• Kaitlyn Testa, Florida International University
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth V. Edgar, Yale University

• James Torrence Todd, Florida International University

• Lorraine E. Bahrick, Florida International University