Time, number and attention in very low birth weight children

Abstract

Premature birth has been associated with damage in many regions of the cerebral cortex, although there is a particularly strong susceptibility for damage within the parieto-occipital lobes (Volpe, 2009). As these areas have been shown to be critical for both visual attention and magnitudes perception (time, space, and number), it is important to investigate the impact of prematurity on both the magnitude and attentional systems, particularly for children without overt white matter injuries, where the lack of obvious injury may cause their difficulties to remain unnoticed. In this study, we investigated the ability to judge time intervals (visual, audio and audio-visual temporal bisection), discriminate between numerical quantities (numerosity comparison), map numbers onto space (numberline task) and to maintain visuo-spatial attention (multiple-object-tracking) in school-age preterm children (N29). The results show that various parietal functions may be more or less robust to prematurity-related difficulties, with strong impairments found on time estimation and attentional task, while numerical discrimination or mapping tasks remained relatively unimpaired. Thus while our study generally supports the hypothesis of a dorsal stream vulnerability in children born preterm relative to other cortical locations, it further suggests that particular cognitive processes, as highlighted by performance on different tasks, are far more susceptible than others.

Visual Form Perception Can Be a Cognitive Correlate of Lower Level Math Categories for Teenagers

“…Gebuis and Reynvoet ( 2011 ) proposed that five visual properties of the numerosity comparison task could affect numerosity comparison: total surface area, envelope area or convex hull, item size, density, and circumference. Density is defined as the number of items per unit area (e.g., Anobile et al, 2013a ; Tinelli et al, 2015 ). Zhou et al ( 2015 ) showed that the numerosity comparison task was still ratio-dependent after the five visual properties of dot arrays were controlled for.…”

Connecting visual objects reduces perceived numerosity and density for sparse but not dense patterns

“…Furthermore, dyscalculic children have often been found to have poorer numerosity thresholds (Mazzocco, Feigenson, & Halberda, 2011;Piazza et al, 2010) -but see also Rousselle and Noel (2007) for a different account. Besides, the investigation of numerosity perception is expanding to other developmental disorders like autism , motor coordination disorders (Gomez et al, 2015) and preterm children (Hellgren, Halberda, Forsman, Ådén, & Libertus, 2013;Tinelli et al, 2015).…”

The Davida Teller Award Lecture, 2016

“…In contrast, performance IQ and verbal IQ, and vocabulary scores, did not differ from the norms. Tinelli et al (2015) have also reported an attention deficit among 29 preterm born children (who were without identified brain lesions on ultrasound) in a motion-related task, the multiple-object tracking test.…”