When less is more: the effects of prematurity on maternal attentional scaffolding and infant executive functioning
Premature birth poses a neurobiological risk for poorer subsequent cognitive outcomes and heterogeneous developmental trajectories for executive functioning. Socio-environmental protective factors that may attenuate risks of negative outcomes include parental scaffolding. However, it is not well-...
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Format: | Final Year Project |
Language: | English |
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Nanyang Technological University
2024
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Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/175441 |
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Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
Language: | English |
Summary: | Premature birth poses a neurobiological risk for poorer subsequent cognitive outcomes and
heterogeneous developmental trajectories for executive functioning. Socio-environmental
protective factors that may attenuate risks of negative outcomes include parental scaffolding.
However, it is not well-understood how attentional scaffolding in particular influences infant
executive function as well as how infant prematurity modulates its effects. This study aimed
to investigate how the relation between maternal attentional scaffolding and infant executive
function is influenced by prematurity. It was hypothesised that more frequent effective
attentional scaffolding would be associated with better executive function, and that this effect would vary
with infants’ degree of prematurity. Mother-infant dyads (N = 38) consisting of 12- and
18-month-old term and preterm infants had undergone the A-not-B task. Infant executive
function was mainly inferred from their reaction time while prematurity was proxied by their
gestational ages. Maternal attention scaffolding was measured across 5 modalities: gaze,
gaze-following, vocalisation, reach, and smile. Unexpectedly, fewer total effective attentional
scaffolding was associated with shorter reaction times and higher accuracy, and it influenced
both term and preterm infants’ performance to similar extents. However, fewer effective
vocalisations in particular benefitted term infants more than preterm infants. Altogether, the
results imply that the quality of attentional scaffolding may matter more than its quantity,
highlighting the importance of contingent scaffolding. It may also be particularly important
for mothers of preterm infants to provide contingent vocalisations to help scaffold their
infants’ attention. |
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