Urqueta Alfaro Andrea, Morash Valerie S, Lei Daisy, Orel-Bixler Deborah
Envision Research Institute, 610 N. Main St., Wichita, KS 67203, USA.
The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2318 Filmore St., San Francisco, CA 94115, USA.
Infant Behav Dev. 2018 Feb;50:311-323. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2017.05.010. Epub 2017 Jun 12.
Coordination of attention between a social partner and an external focus of shared interest, called joint engagement, is associated with positive developmental outcomes such as better language, socio-emotional, and theory of mind skills in sighted infants. Current measures of joint engagement rely on an infant's visual behaviors, making it difficult to study joint engagement in infants with low or no vision. In a naturalistic observational study, 20 infants with various levels of visual impairments - mean ages: 1.08 years (N=9) and 1.62 years (N=18), were videotaped during 30-min free play sessions with their caregivers. Seven infants were tested at both ages. Videos were coded to determine the percentage of time the dyads participated in joint engagement. Results showed that all visually impaired infants participated in joint engagement, with a significant increase between earlier and later ages. Infants' visual impairment levels were described in terms of visual acuity and contrast sensitivity as measured using both visual evoked potential and preferential looking techniques. Of the visual measurements, infants' reduction in contrast sensitivity measured with preferential looking, alone, predicted the infants' percentage of time in joint engagement across ages. Contrary to prior research that exclusively focused on visual acuity, this finding supports the need to include contrast sensitivity measurements in studies with visually impaired infants.
与社会伙伴和共同兴趣的外部焦点之间的注意力协调，即所谓的联合参与，与积极的发展成果相关，如视力正常婴儿具有更好的语言、社会情感和心理理论技能。目前对联合参与的测量依赖于婴儿的视觉行为，这使得研究视力低下或无视力的婴儿的联合参与变得困难。在一项自然观察研究中，20名有不同程度视力障碍的婴儿——平均年龄：1.08岁（N = 9）和1.62岁（N = 18），在与他们的照顾者进行30分钟的自由玩耍期间被录像。7名婴儿在两个年龄段都接受了测试。对视频进行编码以确定二元组参与联合参与的时间百分比。结果显示，所有视力障碍婴儿都参与了联合参与，且早期和晚期之间有显著增加。婴儿的视力障碍水平是根据使用视觉诱发电位和优先注视技术测量的视力和对比敏感度来描述的。在视觉测量中，仅用优先注视测量的婴儿对比敏感度降低预测了不同年龄段婴儿参与联合参与的时间百分比。与之前仅关注视力的研究相反，这一发现支持在对视力障碍婴儿的研究中纳入对比敏感度测量的必要性。
