Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Department of Psychological Science, Birkbeck, University of London, Henry Wellcome Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom.
Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Department of Psychological Science, Birkbeck, University of London, TodderLab, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2023 Oct;63:101300. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101300. Epub 2023 Sep 21.
Infant-directed speech and direct gaze are important social cues that shape infant's attention to their parents. Traditional methods for probing their effect on infant attention involve a small number of pre-selected screen-based stimuli, which do not capture the complexity of real-world interactions. Here, we used neuroadaptive Bayesian Optimization (NBO) to search a large 'space' of different naturalistic social experiences that systematically varied in their visual (gaze direct to averted) and auditory properties (infant directed speech to nonvocal sounds). We measured oscillatory brain responses (relative theta power) during episodes of naturalistic social experiences in 57 typically developing 6- to 12-month-old infants. Relative theta power was used as input to the NBO algorithm to identify the naturalistic social context that maximally elicited attention in each individual infant. Results showed that individual infants were heterogeneous in the stimulus that elicited maximal theta with no overall stronger attention for direct gaze or infant-directed speech; however, individual differences in attention towards averted gaze were related to interpersonal skills and greater likelihood of preferring speech and direct gaze was observed in infants whose parents showed more positive affect. Our work indicates NBO may be a fruitful method for probing the role of distinct social cues in eliciting attention in naturalistic social contexts at the individual level.
婴儿指向性言语和直接注视是塑造婴儿对父母注意力的重要社会线索。传统的探测这些线索对婴儿注意力影响的方法涉及一小部分预先选择的基于屏幕的刺激物，这些刺激物无法捕捉到真实世界互动的复杂性。在这里，我们使用神经自适应贝叶斯优化 (NBO) 来搜索不同自然社会体验的大型“空间”，这些体验在视觉（注视直接转移到回避）和听觉特性（婴儿指向性言语到非语音声音）上系统地变化。我们在 57 名发育正常的 6 至 12 个月大的婴儿的自然社会体验期间测量了振荡脑反应（相对 theta 功率）。相对 theta 功率被用作 NBO 算法的输入，以识别在每个个体婴儿中引起最大注意力的自然社会环境。结果表明，个体婴儿在引起最大 theta 的刺激物上存在异质性，直接注视或婴儿指向性言语并没有引起总体更强的注意力；然而，对回避注视的注意力差异与人际技能有关，并且在父母表现出更多积极情绪的婴儿中观察到更喜欢言语和直接注视的倾向。我们的工作表明，NBO 可能是一种有效的方法，可以在自然社会环境中从个体水平探测不同社会线索在引起注意力方面的作用。
