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Longitudinal Growth in Multisensory Attention Skills Across 3 to 36 Months

Fri, April 9, 10:15 to 11:15am EDT (10:15 to 11:15am EDT), Virtual

Abstract

Basic attention and perception skills develop rapidly across infancy, providing a foundation for more complex skills such as language, social, and cognitive outcomes (Bahrick et al., 2020). Until recently, there have been no methods appropriate for assessing individual differences in these basic skills. Thus, relative competencies of individual children and pathways to outcomes remain poorly understood. The Multisensory Attention Assessment Protocol (MAAP; Bahrick et al., 2018) was developed to address this gap.
The MAAP indexes individual differences in multisensory attention skills (MASks; intersensory matching, attention maintenance, and speed of attention shifting) to social and nonsocial events under conditions of high and low competing stimulation. The present study characterizes developmental trajectories in these basic attention skills from 3-36 months of age in a typically-developing longitudinal sample. This can provide a basis for identifying atypical development of MASks and links with later outcomes.
The MAAP was administered to 107 infants longitudinally at 3, 6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months of age. On each of 24 15-second trials, infants viewed a 3-second dynamic central event, followed by two 12-second side-by-side lateral events depicting either faces speaking or objects dropping (Figure 1). On high competition trials, a central distractor event remains on during the lateral events, and on low competition trials, the distractor event is turned off. On each trial, one of the two lateral events is synchronous with its natural soundtrack (target event) while the other is asynchronous. We assessed intersensory matching of sights and sounds, attention maintenance to the lateral events, and speed of shifting from the central to a lateral event.
We assessed longitudinal trajectories of all three measures using SEM-based latent growth curve modeling.
Developmental change appeared most evident during high competition trials (distractor present). Social: Intersensory matching and attention maintenance showed linear improvement across 3-36 months, ps<.01 (Figure 2A,B), whereas shift speed showed dramatic improvement between 3-6 months before plateauing (p<.001; Figure 2C). Nonsocial: Intersensory matching showed quadratic improvement across 3-36 months, p<.001, attention maintenance showed improvement from 3-18 months before plateauing (p<.001; Figure 2E), and shift speed showed dramatic improvement from 3-12 months before plateauing (p<.001; Figure 2F).
Developmental change appeared less evident during low competition trials (distractor absent). Social: Intersensory matching showed linear improvement, p=.001, whereas attention maintenance and speed of shifting showed little quadratic improvement across 3-36 months, ps<.001 (Figure 2A-C). Nonsocial: Intersensory matching and speed of shifting showed quadratic improvement across 3-36 months, ps<.05, whereas attention maintenance showed no change (Figure 2D-F).
Findings provide the first evidence of longitudinal trajectories characterizing MASks across 3-36 months of age. Developmental change was clearly evident during high levels of competing stimulation, with improvements in all three measures for social and nonsocial events. However, change appeared less evident during low levels of competing stimulation with most measures showing only a little improvement. Future analyses will investigate relations among longitudinal trajectories of basic attention skills and language, social, and cognitive outcomes, with implications for identifying atypical developmental patterns.

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