From early ages, gaze acts as a cue to infer the interests, behaviours, thoughts and emotions of social partners. Despite sharing attentional properties with other non‐social directional stimuli, ...such as arrows, gaze produces unique effects. A spatial interference task revealed this dissociation. The direction of arrows was identified faster on congruent than on incongruent direction‐location trials. Conversely, gaze produced a reversed congruency effect (RCE), with faster identifications on incongruent than congruent trials. To determine the emergence of these gaze‐specific attentional mechanisms, 214 Spanish children (4–17 years) divided into 6 age groups, performed the aforementioned task across three experiments. Results showed stimulus‐specific developmental trajectories. Whereas the standard effect of arrows was unaffected by age, gaze shifted from an arrow‐like effect at age 4 to a gaze‐specific RCE at age 12. The orienting mechanisms shared by gaze and arrows are already present in 4‐year olds and, throughout childhood, gaze becomes a special social cue with additional attentional properties. Besides orienting attention to a direction, as arrows would do, gaze might orient attention towards a specific object that would be attentionally selected. Such additional components may not fully develop until adolescence. Understanding gaze‐specific attentional mechanisms may be crucial for children with atypical socio‐cognitive development.
Organophosphates and pyrethroids are two major groups of insecticides used for crop protection worldwide. They are neurotoxicants and exposure during vulnerable windows of brain development may have ...long-term impact on human neurodevelopment. Only few longitudinal studies have investigated associations between prenatal exposure to these substances and intelligence quotient (IQ) at school age in populations with low, mainly dietary, exposure.
To investigate associations between maternal urinary concentrations of insecticide metabolites at gestational week 28 and IQ in offspring at 7-years of age.
Data was derived from the Odense Child Cohort (OCC). Metabolites of chlorpyrifos (TCPy) and pyrethroids (3-PBA, cis- and trans-DCCA, 4-F-3PBA, cis-DBCA) were measured in maternal urine collected at gestational week (GW) 28. An abbreviated version of the Danish Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children fifth edition (WISC-V) consisting of four subtests to estimate full scale IQ (FSIQ) was administered by trained psychologists. Data were analyzed by use of multiple linear regression and adjusted for confounders.
812 mother/child-pairs were included. Median concentrations were 0.21 μg/L for 3-PBA, 1.67 μg/L for TCPy and the mean IQ for children were 99.4. Null association between maternal 3-PBA and child IQ at 7 years was seen, but with trends suggesting an inverse association. There was a significant association for maternal TCPy and child IQ at mid-level exposure. Trans-DCCA above the level of detection (LOD) was also associated with slightly lower child IQ, but the association was also not statistically significant.
We found no significant associations between maternal 3-PBA metabolites and child IQ at 7 years, but with trends suggesting an inverse association. A non-significant trend between maternal TCPy exposure and child IQ in 7-year-children was seen even in this low exposed population. Given the widespread exposure and increasing use of insecticides, this should be elaborated in future studies.
•Null association between maternal 3-PBA and child IQ was seen, but with trends suggesting an inverse association.•A non-significant trend between maternal TCPy exposure and child IQ in 7-year-children was seen.•trans-DCCA was associated with slightly lower child IQ, but the association was not statistically significant.•Given the widespread exposure and increasing use of insecticides, this should be elaborated in future studies.
Evidence regarding child iodine intake and neurodevelopment is scarce.
We aimed to assess the impact of child iodine intake at 4 years of age on cognitive and motor development at 4 and 6 years among ...304 children from the Rhea cohort on Crete, Greece. Child iodine intake was assessed via urinary iodine concentrations (UIC) measured using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) and adjusted for specific gravity. Child cognitive and motor development was assessed using the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) at 4 years of age and Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM), Finger Tapping Test (FTT), and Trail Making Test (TMT) at 6 years. Associations were explored using multivariable-adjusted linear regression analyses with UIC categorized according to WHO criteria insufficient intake <100 µg/L, adequate 100–299 µg/L (reference group), excessive ≥300 µg/L.
The children’s median UIC was 249 µg/L (25–75th percentile: 181–344 μg/L). Children with UIC <100 μg/L had lower scores in the motor scale at 4 years (MSCA-motor scale: B=-10.3; 95 %CI −19.9, −0.6; n=10) and in intelligence at 6 years (RCPM-total score: B=-3.6, 95 %CI −6.8, −0.5; n=9) than children in the reference group. No associations were found with the general cognitive scale at 4 years or with TMT and FTT scales at 6 years. Children with UIC ≥300 μg/L had lower cognitive scores both at 4 (MSCA; B= −3.5; 95 %CI −6.9, −0.1; n =101) and 6 years of age (RCPM-total score; B= −1.2; 95 %CI −2.3, −0.0; n =98) than children in the reference group. No associations were observed with the motor scale at 4 years or with TMT and FTT scales at 6 years.
Our findings indicate that both low and excessive iodine intake at preschool age may adversely affect child cognitive abilities. Additionally, low iodine intake may also impact motor abilities.
•Low iodine intake is linked to reduced motor scores in preschool age.•Low iodine intake is associated with decreased intelligence at 6 years.•Excessive iodine intake is associated with lower cognitive scores at 4 and 6 years.
Defining play has plagued researchers and philosophers for years. From describing play as an inaccessible concept due to its complexity, to providing checklists of features, the field has struggled ...with how to conceptualize and operationalize "play." This theoretical piece reviews the literature about both play and learning and suggests that by viewing play as a spectrum - that ranges from free play (no guidance or support) to guided play and games (including purposeful adult support while maintaining playful elements), we better capture the true essence of play and explain its relationship to learning. Insights from the Science of Learning allow us to better understand why play supports learning across social and academic domains. By changing the lens through which we conceptualize play, we account for previous findings in a cohesive way while also proposing new avenues of exploration for the field to study the role of learning through play across age and context.
Developmental disorders and childhood learning difficulties encompass complex constellations of relative strengths and weaknesses across multiple aspects of learning, cognition, and behavior. ...Historically, debate in developmental psychology has been focused largely on the existence and nature of core deficits—the shared mechanistic origin from which all observed profiles within a diagnostic category emerge. The pitfalls of this theoretical approach have been articulated multiple times, but reductionist, core-deficit accounts remain remarkably prevalent. They persist because developmental science still follows the methodological template that accompanies core-deficit theories—highly selective samples, case-control designs, and voxel-wise neuroimaging methods. Fully moving beyond “core-deficit” thinking will require more than identifying its theoretical flaws. It will require a wholesale rethink about the way we design, collect, and analyze developmental data.
Social interactions provide a crucial context for early learning and cognitive development during infancy. Action prediction—the ability to anticipate an observed action—facilitates successful, ...coordinated interaction and is an important social‐cognitive skill in early development. However, current knowledge about infant action prediction comes largely from screen‐based laboratory tasks. We know little about what infants’ action prediction skills look like during real‐time, free‐flowing interactions with a social partner. In the current study, we used head‐mounted eyetracking to quantify 9‐month‐old infants’ visual anticipations of their parents’ actions during free‐flowing parent–child play. Our findings reveal that infants do anticipate their parents’ actions during dynamic interactions at rates significantly higher than would be expected by chance. In addition, the frequency with which they do so is associated with child‐led joint attention and hand‐eye coordination. These findings are the first to reveal infants’ action prediction behaviors in a more naturalistic context than prior screen‐based studies, and they support the idea that action prediction is inherently linked to motor development and plays an important role in infants’ social‐cognitive development. A video of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HrmcicfiqE
We used mobile eye‐tracking to measure action prediction during a natural caregiver‐infant social interaction. We found that 9‐month‐old infants anticipate their parent's actions at rates higher than chance. This ability was correlated with joint attention and hand‐eye coordination, suggesting that action prediction is associated with skills that are central to infant social and cognitive development.
Comment les interactions d’un bébé avec son milieu donnent-elles naissance à des catégories discrètes, impliquant des objets et des personnes en référence à un cadre spatio-temporel partagé ? Quels ...facteurs contribuent à la construction de ses représentations ? Quelle part y prend le temps ? Comment est-il lui-même représenté ? Nous adopterons l’approche du psychologue A. Bullinger, qui considère que l’élément décisif dans ce processus est l’intégration des signaux sensoriels produits par l’organisme aux signaux toniques générés par sa motricité. Les liaisons de ces deux types de signaux, les uns en rapport avec les flux irritant ses capteurs, les autres issus de son engagement moteur, seraient simultanément la clef de l’installation des conduites instrumentales et du phénomène de représentation. L’entourage joue un rôle spécifique. Le bébé trouve dans +la disponibilité des personnes qui s’occupent de lui un miroir sensoriel multimodal correspondant de manière synchrone et isomorphe à ses mimiques, ses ajustements posturaux, ses mouvements. Lorsque les moments de dialogue tonicoémotionnel ne peuvent être inscrits dans le projet de soin, on peut s’attendre à une perte de chances dans son développement cognitif et son autonomie ultérieure. Un peu de temps pour un gain de temps la vie durant ?
Why do people punish selfish behavior? Are they motivated to punish perpetrators of selfishness (retribution) or to compensate the victims of selfishness (restoration)? Developmental data can provide ...important insight into these questions by revealing whether punishment of selfishness is more retributive or restorative when it first emerges. Across two studies, we examined costly third‐party intervention in 6‐ to 9‐year‐olds. In Study 1, children learned about a selfish actor who refused to share with a recipient. Children then chose to (1) punish the selfish actor by rejecting their payoff (retribution); (2) compensate the victim of selfishness by equalizing payoffs between the perpetrator and victim (restoration); or (3) do nothing. We found that children were more likely to punish than compensate in response to selfishness, suggesting that intervention in this context is more retributive than restorative. In Study 2, we tested third‐party intervention in the face of generosity which, like selfishness, can lead to unequal outcomes. As in Study 1, children in this context could reject unequal payoffs, thereby depriving the recipient of the advantageous payoff but having no effect on the actor. Children could also use compensation in this context, equalizing the payoffs between actor and recipient. We found that children did not punish inequality that stemmed from generosity, suggesting that the retributive punishment in Study 1 was specifically targeting selfishness rather than inequality more generally. These results contribute to the debate on the function of third‐party punishment in humans, suggesting that retributive motives toward selfish transgressors are privileged during ontogeny.
Children learned about a previous actot's sharing decision and could intervene by (1) accepting their decision; (2) punishing the actor, thereby removing all resources or (3) compensating the victim by equalizing payoffs. We found that children were more likely to punish than compensate in response to selfishness. These results suggest that retributive motives toward selfish transgressors are privileged during ontogeny.
•Cross-discipline research relating to emergent executive function (EF) is reviewed.•Individual differences in infancy affect later EF.•Attention control, self-regulation and processing speed are ...foundational to EF.•By age 3, infants can demonstrate impulse control and cognitive flexibility.
Executive function (EF) underpins the ability to set goals and work towards those goals by co-ordinating thought and action. Its emergence during the first 3 years of life is under-studied, largely due to the limitations that early social, motor and language skills place on performance on traditional EF tasks. Nevertheless, across the fields of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, social development and temperament research, evidence is amassing of meaningful precursors and predictors of EF. This review draws together the evidence, highlighting methodological considerations and areas of theoretical debate, and identifies 4 domains critical to the development of EF: control of attention, self-regulation, processing speed and cognitive flexibility. Individual differences within these domains have clinical significance both in terms of the identification of risk markers for later executive dysfunction and for the target or delivery of early intervention to ameliorate this risk. By the end of the third year, typically-developing infants are able to selectively employ impulse control and cognitive flexibility to achieve goal-directed responses to novel situations.
PDF
