Individual differences in newborn visual attention associate with temperament and behavioral difficulties in later childhood

摘要

Recently it was shown that individual differences in attention style in infants areudassociated with childhood effortful control, surgency, and hyperactivity-inattention. Here weudinvestigated whether effortful control, surgency and behavioral problems in childhood can beudpredicted even earlier, from individual differences in newborns’ average duration of gaze toudstimuli. Eighty newborns participated in visual preference and habituation studies. Parentsudcompleted questionnaires at follow up (mean age = 7.5 years, SD = 1.0 year). Newborns’udaverage dwell time was negatively associated with childhood surgency (β = -.25, R2 = .04, p =ud.02) and total behavioral difficulties (β = -.28, R2 = .05, p = .04) but not with effortful control (βud= .03, R2 = .001, p = .76). Individual differences in newborn visual attention significantlyudassociated with individual variation in childhood surgency and behavioral problems, showingudthat some of the factors responsible for this variation are present at birth.