InterPlay · A Part to Play: How Caregivers Shape Infants' Visual Exploration and Alter Their Neural Mechanisms of Attention
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-07-01 → 2023-07-26
- EU contribution
- €184,591
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
A Part to Play: How Caregivers Shape Infants' Visual Exploration and Alter Their Neural Mechanisms of Attention
Infants are curious learners. They face the daunting task of learning to understand the world around them. Healthy infants born at term (that is, between 37 and 42 weeks of pregnancy) seem to attend to objects and people in their environment in a way that is beneficial for learning. For example, researchers have shown that infants prefer to look at sequences according to “the Goldilocks effect”: Infants prefer those sequences that are neither too boring nor too complex, but rather exactly right (Kidd, et al., 2012). Infants born prematurely (that is, before 37 weeks of pregnancy) allocate their visual attention differently from infants born at term. It has been hypothesized that preterm infants do not allocate their attention in a way that is beneficial for learning, which could possibly explain why some preterm infants later experience developmental problems or delays. It is therefore essential to understand how learning via visual attention happens in order to grasp the impact of deviating attention allocation on development. The MSCA-IF project “InterPlay” set out to increase our understanding of how infants learn by focusing on the way they decide where to look.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Infants learn and develop at incredible speed. Although relatively helpless at birth, infants undergo significant development in the first year of life in many domains. But how do infants learn so quickly? They likely gather information that is optimal for learning by systematically allocating their visual attention to specific types of stimuli. Allocation of visual attention can be (1) intrinsically driven to guide their explorations in the world, or (2) guided by other social agents. Moreover, infants’ intrinsic visual exploration may be dependent on the “hardware”: the brain. This project aims to develop a comprehensive account of how these mechanisms interact in full-term and pre-term infants. Visual exploration and attention is often disrupted in pre-term infants, which may contribute to developmental delays. Since the World Health Organization estimates that 15 million infants are born pre-term annually, it is crucial to investigate how infants visually explore their environment and how this can be promoted through social interactions. Research into infants’ visual attention has been conducted by scientists from various fields, but few attempts have been made to integrate these findings into a comprehensive framework. As such, the interplay between these factors remains unknown. This lack of integration causes severe gaps in our theoretical understanding, hindering the development of healthcare policies and interventions. InterPlay addresses these knowledge gaps by integrating previous observations into a comprehensive, longitudinal study. The findings will have implications for current scientific and therapeutic practices. If caregiver attention-guiding behaviours could compensate disruptions in pre-term infants’ visual exploration, this would offer great potential for interventions early in life. Furthermore, infants’ brain connectivity may provide a unique predictor for the necessity of intervention, allowing healthcare providers to act in a timely manner.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE PROVOST, FELLOWS, FOUNDATION SCHOLARS & THE OTHER MEMBERS OF BOARD, OF THE COLLEGE OF THE HOLY & UNDIVIDED TRINITY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH NEAR DUBLIN · DublinCoordinatorIreland
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union