Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA.
Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2022 Nov;64(7):e22325. doi: 10.1002/dev.22325.
The home auditory environment influences the development of early language abilities, and excessive noise exposure is increasingly linked with deficits in language and reading scores in children. However, fewer studies have considered the role of noise exposure in shaping the development of attentional processing in early infancy, a foundational neurocognitive skill relevant for learning. Here, we used passive at-home auditory recording to investigate how multiple dimensions of infants' home auditory environments, including both the quantity and the predictability of auditory input, impacts neural and behavioral measures of sustained attention in a sociodemographically diverse sample of 3-month-old infants (N = 98 infants, 62 males; age M = 3.48 months, SD = 0.39; 52% Hispanic/Latino). Results indicated that infants who were exposed to more predictable patterns of auditory input in the home demonstrated longer overall time in sustained attention during laboratory assessments. In addition, infants' who experienced more predictable auditory input also demonstrated greater relative increases in electroencephalography frontal theta power during periods of sustained attention, a neural marker relevant to information processing and attentional control. These findings provide novel evidence into the importance of the predictability of early environmental inputs in shaping developing cortical circuitry and attentional systems from the first months of postnatal life.
家庭听觉环境会影响早期语言能力的发展，而过度的噪音暴露与儿童的语言和阅读分数缺陷越来越相关。然而，较少的研究考虑了噪音暴露在塑造早期婴儿注意力处理发展中的作用，而注意力处理是与学习相关的基础神经认知技能。在这里，我们使用被动的家庭听觉记录来研究婴儿家庭听觉环境的多个维度，包括听觉输入的数量和可预测性，如何影响社会人口统计学上多样化的 3 个月大婴儿（N=98 名婴儿，62 名男性；年龄 M=3.48 个月，SD=0.39；52%为西班牙裔/拉丁裔）的持续注意力的神经和行为测量。结果表明，在家中接触到更可预测的听觉输入模式的婴儿在实验室评估中表现出更长的持续注意力总时间。此外，经历更可预测听觉输入的婴儿在持续注意力期间也表现出更大的额部 theta 功率相对增加，这是与信息处理和注意力控制相关的神经标志物。这些发现为早期环境输入的可预测性在塑造出生后生命最初几个月的发育皮层回路和注意力系统中的重要性提供了新的证据。
