Visual Attention Ability in 5-Week-Old and 4-Month-Old Infants
Keywords:
Visual attention, infants, alerting network, orienting network, neurodevelopmentAbstract
Visual attention plays a crucial role in an infant's perception and development, especially during the first year of life. This visual attention system consists of three key networks: the alerting network, the orienting network, and the executive control network.
This study aimed to examine the relationship between visual attention in the alerting and orienting networks in 5-week-old infants and visual attention in the orienting network in
4-month-old infants. The participants were 137 infants with prenatal exposure to pesticides, as part of the "SAWASDEE Project" in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The research instruments used were the NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale (NNNS) and the Visual Habituation Task. The findings obtained by hierarchical regression analysis revealed a significant negative correlation between visual attention in the alerting network at 5 weeks and visual attention in the orienting network at 4 months (β = -0.31, p < .01). However, no significant correlation was found between visual attention in the orienting network at 5 weeks and visual attention in the orienting network at 4 months. This discrepancy may reflect the developmental timing of the orienting network, which is still immature at 5 weeks and becomes more functionally established around
3 to 4 months of age. These findings suggest that well-developed visual attention in
the alerting network may serve as a crucial foundation for the development of visual attention in the orienting network, which helps direct infants' focus and enables them to concentrate on relevant stimuli.
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