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

Abstract

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.

Relational and Individual Resources as Predictors of Empathy in Early Childhood

“…In the current sample, maternal psychological resources (which includes mental health and personal mastery in addition to intelligence) was correlated with child's cognitive and language development (but not social engagement of mother) at a level similar to those of several of the major predicted associations, that is, .22. Child's birth weight, a typically robust predictor of a child's constitutional strengths even for weights within the normal range (Dannemiller, 2004), was correlated with both the cognitive and social strengths we assessed at age two. Thus, despite our inability to draw definitive causal conclusions, the plausibility of our final models is bolstered by the fact that we included two alternative explanations of variance (one parent and one child) measured prenatally or at the birth of the child, and the predictive paths and mediation remained significant.…”

“…We wanted to know whether the predictions between maternal emotional availability and child cognitive and social strengths would hold true over and above their associations with maternal psychological resources, child's birth weight, and difficult infant temperament. Child's birth weight, a typically robust predictor of a child's constitutional strengths even for weights within the normal range (Dannemiller, 2004), is associated with less mature sensorimotor functioning and could therefore have an impact on children's cognitive and social resources or empathy (Moreno & Robinson, 2005). Infant difficult temperament is believed to be influenced by biological factors and ongoing socialization experiences (Rothbart, Ahadi, & Evans, 2000) and has been shown to predict later behavior problems including unempathic responding (Kiang et al, 2004).…”

“…All modeling analyses were conducted using Mplus3 software (Muthen & Muthen, 1998-2004 and three indicators of model fit were evaluated: (1) weighted least squares chi-square, where a non-significant value is desirable indicating that there is no significant difference between the observed and fitted covariance matrices; (2) root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), where a value close to zero is desirable indicating a negligible difference between the population and fitted covariance matrices; and (3) comparative fit index (CFI), which ranges between 0 and 1 and where a value close to 1 is desirable indicating that the fitted model accounts for the covariance matrix better than the null model (Hu & Bentler, 1995).…”

Genetic associations with reflexive visual attention in infancy and childhood

“…predators or traffic), obtaining food, succeeding in school and work, and engaging with others. Children can show relative deficits in attention from early in life (Dannemiller, 2004;Holmboe, Nemoda, Fearon, Csibra, Sasvari-Szekely et al, 2010;Jones & Klin, 2013;Scafidi & Field, 1997). These deficits may be connected with disorders of attention.…”

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This study elucidates genetic influences on reflexive (as opposed to sustained) attention in children (aged 9-16 years; N = 332) who previously participated as infants in visual attention studies using orienting to a moving bar (Dannemiller, 2004). We investigated genetic associations with reflexive attention measures in infancy and childhood in the same group of children.

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