Mapping the Specific Pathways to Early-Onset Mental Health Disorders: The “Watch Me Grow for REAL” Study Protocol

Doyle, Frances L.; Diaz, Antonio Mendoza; Eapen, Valsamma; Frick, Paul J.; Kimonis, Eva R.; Hawes, David J.; Moul, Caroline; Richmond, Jenny L.; Sareen, Sinia; Morgan, Bronte G.; Dadds, Mark R.

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00553

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 132 publications

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“…We also go to the heart of NIMH's Objective 2, by characterizing trajectories of neural and behavioral development in order to identify clinically useful indicators of change across illness trajectories. This approach also parallels emerging studies ( 45 ) that examine selective attention and responsiveness to emotional expression as a means of scaffolding the development of empathy and social cognition. The available data also suggest that attention patterns, and their associations with socioemotional functioning, may change over time ( 46 – 48 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Study Protocol: Longitudinal Attention and Temperament Study

et al. 2021

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Background: Attention processes may play a central role in shaping trajectories of socioemotional development. Individuals who are clinically anxious or have high levels of trait anxiety sometimes show attention biases to threat. There is emerging evidence that young children also demonstrate a link between attention bias to salient stimuli and broad socioemotional profiles. However, we do not have a systematic and comprehensive assessment of how attention biases, and associated neural and behavioral correlates, emerge and change from infancy through toddlerhood. This paper describes the Longitudinal Attention and Temperament study (LAnTs), which is designed to target these open questions.Method: The current study examines core components of attention across the first 2 years of life, as well as measures of temperament, parental psychosocial functioning, and biological markers of emotion regulation and anxiety risk. The demographically diverse sample (N = 357) was recruited from the area surrounding State College, PA, Harrisburg, PA, and Newark, NJ. Infants and parents are assessed at 4, 8, 12, 18, and 24 months. Assessments include repeated measures of attention bias (via eye-tracking) in both infants and parents, and measures of temperament (reactivity, negative affect), parental traits (e.g., anxiety and depression), biological markers (electrophysiology, EEG, and respiratory sinus arrythmia, RSA), and the environment (geocoding, neighborhood characteristics, perceived stress). Outcomes include temperamental behavioral inhibition, social behavior, early symptom profiles, and cellular aging (e.g., telomere length).Discussion: This multi-method study aims to identify biomarkers and behavioral indicators of attentional and socioemotional trajectories. The current study brought together innovative measurement techniques to capture the earliest mechanisms that may be causally linked to a pervasive set of problem behaviors. The analyses the emerge from the study will address important questions of socioemotional development and help shape future research. Analyses systematically assessing attention bias patterns, as well as socioemotional profiles, will allow us to delineate the time course of any emerging interrelations. Finally, this study is the first to directly assess competing models of the role attention may play in socioemotional development in the first years of life.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Study Protocol: Longitudinal Attention and Temperament Study

et al. 2021

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“…Three hundred and nineteen children (50.2% boys; M age = 14.7 months, SD = 2.3, age range: 11.1–25.6 months) from the “Watch Me Grow for REAL” longitudinal birth‐cohort study (Doyle et al., 2020) completed the evaluative conditioning task at Time 2 (T2). All children were born in Australia.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to like triangles: A longitudinal investigation of evaluative conditioning in infancy

Doyle

Klein

Kemp

et al. 2022

Developmental Psychobiology

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There is tentative evidence that infants can learn preferences through evaluative conditioning to socioemotional stimuli. However, the early development of evaluative conditioning and the factors that may explain infants' capacity to learn through evaluative conditioning are not well understood. Infants (N = 319; 50.2% boys) participated in a longitudinal study where an evaluative conditioning paradigm using socioemotional stimuli was conducted on two occasions (when infants were 7 and 14 months old, on average). We tested whether repeatedly pairing neutral stimuli (triangular and square shapes) with affective stimuli (angry and happy faces) affects infants' preferences for these shapes. At both timepoints, the majority of infants did not choose the shape that was paired with happy faces, indicating that, in general, learning through evaluative conditioning was not present. However, as expected, individual differences were evident such that infants who spent more time fixating on faces compared to shapes (face-preferrers) during the conditioning trials were significantly more likely than non-face-preferrers to choose the shape paired with happy faces, and this effect strengthened with increasing age.

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“…Participants were part of a larger study following a cohort of mother-child dyads prospectively from mother's antenatal appointments until children turn three-year-old "Watch Me Grow for REAL" study (Doyle et al, 2020). All families were recruited from the same hospital at birth and were invited to attend a research assessment when their child was aged between 6 and 11 months old.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gaze was recorded using a Tobii Pro X2-60 monitor-mounted eye tracker, which used a set of infrared cameras to sample gaze at 60 Hz. Due to necessary technical changes for another task in the broader "Watch Me Grow for REAL" project (Doyle et al, 2020), three monitor sizes were used (23-in., 23.35-in., and 24-in.). However, monitor size was taken into account for analysis; and all three monitors had 1920 × 1080 pixel resolution, which ensured consistency in stimuli size.…”

Section: Apparatusmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Still connecting the dots: An investigation into infants' attentional bias to threat using an eye‐tracking task

Sareen

Doyle

Kemp

et al. 2021

Infancy

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An attentional bias toward threat has been theorized to be a normative aspect of infants' threat and safety learning, and an indicator of risk for internalizing psychopathology in older populations. To date, only four studies have examined this bias using the dot-probe task in infancy and the findings are mixed. We extended the literature by examining patterns of attention to threat in a culturally and linguistically diverse sample of infants aged 5-11 months old (N = 151) using all measures previously employed in the infant dot-probe literature.Given that an attentional bias toward threat is associated with higher risk of developing anxiety disorders later in life, we also examined how negative affect-an early correlate of later anxiety disorders-is related to attentional bias toward threat in infancy. This study was the first to use a consistent measure of negative affect across the whole sample. An eye-tracking dot-probe task was used to examine attentional bias toward threat (i.e., angry faces) relative to positive (i.e., happy faces) stimuli. Results showed that an attention bias to threat | 47 SAREEN et al.

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Mapping the Specific Pathways to Early-Onset Mental Health Disorders: The “Watch Me Grow for REAL” Study Protocol

Cited by 6 publications

References 132 publications

Study Protocol: Longitudinal Attention and Temperament Study

Study Protocol: Longitudinal Attention and Temperament Study

Learning to like triangles: A longitudinal investigation of evaluative conditioning in infancy

Still connecting the dots: An investigation into infants' attentional bias to threat using an eye‐tracking task

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