Summary: Researchers have found that caregiver cognition is associated with infant visual cognition and brain function. The study revealed that infants’ ability to detect visual changes is connected to their caregivers’ visual cognition and behavioral regulation.
Brain imaging also showed similarities in how both caregivers and infants process information in the parietal cortex, a key brain region for attention and memory. These findings highlight the cognitive links between caregivers and infants in the first year of life and could lead to customized interventions for early development.
Key Facts:
- Caregiver cognition is linked to infant visual cognition and brain function.
- Both infants and caregivers show similar brain activity in the parietal cortex.
- The study suggests potential for customized interventions based on caregiver behavior.
Source: University of Nottingham
New research using experimental and brain imaging tools has shown that there is an association between caregiver and child cognition.
Researchers from the University of Nottingham’s School of Psychology examined infant visual cognition—important for how they navigate the world around them, engage with objects, and learn new concepts. The team explored whether caregiver cognitive functions would be associated with infant visual cognition.
The research has been published in the journals Infant Behavior and Development and Infant and Child Development.
About 90 families from East Midlands area who had infants between the ages of 6 and 10 months took part in the study in the Infant and Toddler Lab in the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham. During their visit, both caregivers and their infants participated in experimental tasks while the researchers measured their behavioral responses and brain function using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).
In this technique, caregivers and infants wear caps with sensors that shine near-infrared light to measure brain function. Infants and caregivers were presented with colorful, changing shapes on a TV screen and researchers examined how they both looked at and switched their gaze between the shapes.
Caregivers also completed an inhibitory control task (how they respond to some stimuli and inhibit their response to others) and questionnaires that assessed how they regulated their behaviors.
The team found that infant visual cognition was linked to two aspects of caregiver cognition—their own visual cognition and behavioral regulation. Specifically, infants’ abilities to detect change was linked to their caregivers’ abilities to also detect change and efficiently monitor and/or inhibit their behaviors.
In addition to behavioral links, the team also found a link between caregiver and infant brain function—in regions in the parietal cortex, an area important for attending to objects in space, working memory and attention.
Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar, Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology, led this research. She said, “We are excited about these findings. We know from later in development that there are links between caregiver cognition and child cognition. It is promising to see these associations in the first year of life both in behavior and brain function.
“In the future, these findings could potentially be used to customize interventions based on caregiver behavioral preferences. We are also excited about the next stage of our work, which tackles whether these associations are linked to how caregivers and infants interact with one another during play time.”
One of the families commented, “Learning that there is a link between my own and my baby’s behavior and brain development is fascinating. We know that as they get older, they start to ‘copy’ our behaviors, but trying to examine how our brains could also be similarly wired—blows my mind.”
About this cognition and neurodevelopment research news
Author: Sobana Wijeakumar
Source: University of Nottingham
Contact: Sobana Wijeakumar – University of Nottingham
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Association between caregiver and infant visual neurocognition” by Sobana Wijeakumar et al. Infant Behavior and Development
Open access.
“Caregiver executive functions are associated with infant visual working memory” by Sobana Wijeakumar et al. Infant and Child Development
Abstract
Association between caregiver and infant visual neurocognition
Previous work has shown that caregiver attention shapes visual cognition in infants through dyadic interactions. Is this association measurable when visual cognition is objectively measured in caregivers and infants using comparable experimental paradigms?
In the current study, we presented infants (N = 86) and caregivers (N = 78) with age-specific variants of the same preferential looking visual cognition task to investigate whether caregiver visual cognition was associated with their infants’ visual cognition. In each trial of the task, two side-by-side flashing displays of coloured shapes were presented.
On the ‘unchanging’ side, the colours of the shapes remained the same. On the ‘changing’ side, the colour of one shape changed after each flash. Load was varied by changing the number of shapes across trials (low, medium, and high loads). We extracted looking dynamics using video recordings and brain function using functional near-infrared spectroscopy as both infants and caregivers engaged with the task.
Change preference (CP) score, which represented the amount of time spent looking at the changing side divided by the total looking duration, showed a load-dependent modulation for both infants and caregivers. Both groups showed the highest CP scores at the low load.
Further, higher caregiver CP scores was associated with higher infant CP scores at the low load. Both infants and caregivers engaged canonical regions of the fronto-parietal network involved in visual cognition.
Critically, higher caregiver CP scores were associated with greater activation in the left superior parietal lobule in younger infants, a region involved in allocating visuo-spatial attention and working memory maintenance.
Further, there was spatial overlap between performance-dependent regions in the right parietal cortex in caregivers and younger infants.
Our findings provide first evidence of a heritability-related visual neurocognitive association between caregivers and their children in the first year of life.
Abstract
Caregiver executive functions are associated with infant visual working memory
Caregiver executive functions (EFs) play an integral role in shaping cognitive development.
Here, we investigated how caregiver EF abilities (86 caregivers; mean age = 33.4 years, SD = 4.5) was associated with visual working memory (VWM) in infants (86 infants females; mean age = 250.6 days, SD = 35.8).
The BRIEF-A was used to assess caregiver EFs, and a preferential looking task along with fNIRS was used to assess VWM function in infants.
Our findings revealed that better caregiver behavioral regulation was associated with better VWM performance, greater right-lateralized parietal activation, and left-lateralized frontal suppression, while better caregiver metacognition and emotional control was associated with greater right-lateralized temporal suppression in infants.
Taken together, these associations suggest that better caregiver EF abilities might shape visuo-spatial attention and memory, guide fixation on task-relevant goals, and suppress distractions in children from as early as the first year of life.
