Growth Parameters and Attention to Faces at 4 to 6 Months of Age

Camp, Bonnie W.; Jamieson-Darr, Karen; Hansen, Robin; Schmidt, Bonnie

doi:10.1097/00004703-199010000-00002

“…Of course, this account must be considered in any study that finds a correlation between a measure of physiological maturity at birth (e.g., gestational length, weight, length, or head circumference) and an outcome measure. In fact, there is a sizeable literature showing that different aspects of physiological maturity at birth predict visual performance (visual orienting at 2 to 5 months: Dannemiller, 2004; attention to faces at 4 to 6 months: Camp, Jamieson-Darr, Hansen, & Schmidt, 1990; visual recognition memory from 5 to 12 months: Rose, 1994) and non-visual performance (language and gross movement at 4 years: Ounsted, Moar, & Scott, 1984; IQ in childhood: Churchill, 1965; Jefferis, Power, & Hertzman, 2002; Matte, Bresnahan, Begg, & Susser, 2001; Scarr, 1969). Analyses that control for prenatal environment factors will help determine whether correlations observed between physiological measures of maturity at birth and later visual performance (as in the current and previous studies) are driven by these factors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of gestational length, gender, postnatal age, and birth order on visual contrast sensitivity in infants

Dobkins

¹

,

Bosworth

²

,

McCleery

³

2009

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To investigate effects of visual experience versus preprogrammed mechanisms on visual development, we used multiple regression analysis to determine the extent to which a variety of variables (that differ in the extent to which they are tied to visual experience) predict luminance and chromatic (red/green) contrast sensitivity (CS), which are mediated by the magnocellular (M) and parvocellular (P) subcortical pathways, respectively. Our variables included gestational length (GL), birth weight (BW), gender, postnatal age (PNA), and birth order (BO). Two-month-olds (n = 60) and 6-month-olds (n = 122) were tested. Results revealed that (1) at 2 months, infants with longer GL have higher luminance CS; (2) at both ages, CS significantly increases over a ~21-day range of PNA, but this effect is stronger in 2- than 6-month-olds and stronger for chromatic than luminance CS; (3) at 2 months, boys have higher luminance CS than girls; and (4) at 2 months, firstborn infants have higher CS, while at 6 months, non-firstborn infants have higher CS. The results for PNA/GL are consistent with the possibility that P pathway development is more influenced by variables tied to visual experience (PNA), while M pathway development is more influenced by variables unrelated to visual experience (GL). Other variables, including prenatal environment, are also discussed.

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“…Birth weight and head circumference are correlated (Crawford, Doyle, & Meadows, 1987;Nishi et al, 1992), and head circumference at birth reflects the rate of head growth in utero (Sheth, Mullett, Bodensteiner, & Hobbs, 1995). Childhood IQ and attention in infancy are not just related to birth weight, but also to head circumference at birth (Camp et al, 1990;Ounsted et al, 1984). To the extent that head circumference is an indirect measure of brain size, then this association between birth weight and later cognition may reflect the physiological maturity of the brain at birth.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variations in birth weight within the normal range are related to visual orienting in infancy for boys but not for girls

Dannemiller

¹

2004

Infant Behavior and Development

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Pooling across 27 experiments on visual orienting during early infancy generated a large sample of full-term infants with birth weights greater than 2500 g (N = 944). A weight-for-date measure was obtained separately for girls and for boys by residualizing birth weight on gestational age at birth. The proportion of trials with orienting toward a moving target increased directly with this weight-for-date measure for boys but not for girls in a linear regression with adjustments for gestational age at testing, birth order and visual stimulus parameters across experiments. The same relations held when raw birth weight was used as a predictor. For the 475 boys, the z-score of the orienting measure increased by 0.221 for each kilogram increase in birth weight corrected for gestational age (0.196 z-units per kilogram adjusted for covariates, 95% CI = 0.04-0.35 z-units per kg, P = 0.014). The interaction of gender and birth weight in this association makes explanations based on confounding family social variables less tenable as explanations. This association primarily for boys is similar to recently reported associations between birth weight and IQ during childhood. Possible factors underlying this association such as prenatal nutrition are discussed.

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“…In the Camp et al (1990) study, boys typically showed longer initial fixation times than girls; longer fixation times are usually associated with less mature attentional processing. The relation between birth weight and later IQ is stronger in males than in females (Matte et al, 2001), although the gender difference in this relation is not seen in all samples (e.g., Jefferis et al, 2002).…”

mentioning

confidence: 93%

Variations in birth weight within the normal range are related to visual orienting in infancy for boys but not for girls

Dannemiller

¹

2004

Infant Behavior and Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Pooling across 27 experiments on visual orienting during early infancy generated a large sample of full-term infants with birth weights greater than 2500 g (N = 944). A weight-for-date measure was obtained separately for girls and for boys by residualizing birth weight on gestational age at birth. The proportion of trials with orienting toward a moving target increased directly with this weight-for-date measure for boys but not for girls in a linear regression with adjustments for gestational age at testing, birth order and visual stimulus parameters across experiments. The same relations held when raw birth weight was used as a predictor. For the 475 boys, the z-score of the orienting measure increased by 0.221 for each kilogram increase in birth weight corrected for gestational age (0.196 z-units per kilogram adjusted for covariates, 95% CI = 0.04-0.35 z-units per kg, P = 0.014). The interaction of gender and birth weight in this association makes explanations based on confounding family social variables less tenable as explanations. This association primarily for boys is similar to recently reported associations between birth weight and IQ during childhood. Possible factors underlying this association such as prenatal nutrition are discussed.

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Growth Parameters and Attention to Faces at 4 to 6 Months of Age

Cited by 4 publications

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Effects of gestational length, gender, postnatal age, and birth order on visual contrast sensitivity in infants

Effects of gestational length, gender, postnatal age, and birth order on visual contrast sensitivity in infants

Variations in birth weight within the normal range are related to visual orienting in infancy for boys but not for girls

Variations in birth weight within the normal range are related to visual orienting in infancy for boys but not for girls

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