Toddlers Using Tablets: They Engage, Play, and Learn.

Although very young children have unprecedented access to touchscreen devices, there is limited research on how successfully they operate these devices for play and learning. For infants and toddlers, whose cognitive, fine motor, and executive functions are immature, several basic questions are significant: (1) Can they operate a tablet purposefully to achieve a goal? (2) Can they acquire operating skills and learn new information from commercially available apps? (3) Do individual differences in executive functioning predict success in using and learning from the apps? Accordingly, 31 2-year-olds ( = 30.82 month, = 2.

A pseudoisochromatic test of color vision for human infants.

Despite the development of experimental methods capable of measuring early human color vision, we still lack a procedure comparable to those used to diagnose the well-identified congenital and acquired color vision anomalies in older children, adults, and clinical patients. In this study, we modified a pseudoisochromatic test to make it more suitable for young infants. Using a forced choice preferential looking procedure, 216 3-to-23-mo-old babies were tested with pseudoisochromatic targets that fell on either a red/green or a blue/yellow dichromatic confusion axis.

The development of prospective memory in preschool children using naturalistic tasks.

The development of prospective memory (PM) in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children (N=123) was assessed in two experiments using several naturalistic game-like tasks that varied in the explicitness of the cues for retrieval that they provided. The goals of the study were to evaluate age differences in PM (a) with the effects of retrospective memory (RM) factored out and (b) as a function of increasing retrieval cue specificity. Results from Experiment 1 showed that there were age differences in PM on a simulated Shopping Trip task that favored older children after age differences attributable to RM were identified in a hierarchical regression.

Comparison of Patti Pics and Lea Symbols optotypes in children and adults.

Purpose: Although a great variety of pediatric tests of visual acuity exist, few have been compared directly within the same patients or have been evaluated directly against an adult gold standard.

Methods: Right eyes from 80 3- to 5-year-old preschoolers were tested at 3 m with the two current pediatric optotype tests-the Patti Pics and the Lea Symbols (Mass VAT versions)-that best adhere to the international standard for early eye and vision screening. For comparison, right eyes from 52 adults were tested under the same conditions with both pediatric tests and with a gold standard Mass VAT Sloan letter test.

Children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder show an amblyopia-like pattern of vision deficit.

Aim: The aim of the study was to assess and characterize visual functioning in children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) using a broader and more inclusive range of measures than has been reported previously.

Method: Standard tests of visual functioning were used to assess 21 children (11 females, 10 males) with FASD and 21 sex- and age-matched comparison children without FASD. The age of the children ranged from 6 years 9 months to 11 years 11 months (mean 9y 6mo).

Background Television and Infants' Allocation of Their Attention During Toy Play.

The effect of background television on 6- and 12-month-olds' attention during 20 min of toy play was examined. During the first or second half of the session, a clip from a variety of commonly available television programs was presented. The duration and frequency of infants' looks to the toys and to the television indicated that regardless of age or program content, background television frequently got, but did not hold the infants' attention.

Infant attention and visual preferences: converging evidence from behavior, event-related potentials, and cortical source localization.

In this study, we had 3 major goals. The 1st goal was to establish a link between behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures of infant attention and recognition memory. To assess the distribution of infant visual preferences throughout ERP testing, we designed a new experimental procedure that embeds a behavioral measure (paired comparison trials) in the modified-oddball ERP procedure.

The Neural Bases of Infant Attention.

The development of attention in the infant can be characterized by changes in overall arousal (attentiveness) and by changes in attention's effect on specific cognitive processes (e.g., stimulus orienting, spatial selection, recognition memory).

When the television is on: the impact of infant-directed video on 6- and 18-month-olds' attention during toy play and on parent-infant interaction.

The pattern of 6- and 18-month-old infants' and their parents' attention to toys, a commercially available infant-directed video, and each other were examined in a 20 min free-play context as a function of whether the television was on or off. The results indicated that infants at both ages directed significantly more of their attention to the toys than the video when the toys were novel. Attention to the parent was low across the session.

Prevalence of amblyopia and other vision disorders in young Newfoundland and Labrador children.

Background: Currently, there is a lack of adequate data on pediatric eye and vision disorders in Canada, particularly in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. In the present study, we estimate the prevalence of eye and vision disorders among young children who participated in a vision screening program in the St. John's, Newfoundland, metropolitan region.

Obesity in a provincial population of Canadian preschool children: differences between 1984 and 1997 birth cohorts.

Objective: To determine whether trends of increasing overweight and obesity reported for older children and adults are evident in Canadian preschoolers.

Methods: A sample of 3857 preschool-aged children (51.1% boys) in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, born in 1984 and measured in 1987-1989, was selected from government archival records.

Infants' attention to patterned stimuli: developmental change from 3 to 12 months of age.

To examine the development of look duration as a function of age and stimulus type, 14- to 52-week-old infants were shown static and dynamic versions of faces, Sesame Street material, and achromatic patterns for 20 s of accumulated looking. Heart rate was recorded during looking and parsed into stimulus orienting, sustained attention, and attention termination phases. Infants' peak look durations indicated that prior to 26 weeks there was a linear decrease with age for all stimuli.

Accuracy of the contrast sensitivity card test for infants: retest variability and prediction of spatial resolution.

Purpose: We assessed the retest variability of a new contrast sensitivity (CS) card procedure and its ability to predict spatial resolution.

Methods: Twenty-four 3-month-olds were tested twice with the CS cards and once with the Teller acuity cards (TAC) within a single session.

Results: Coefficient of repeatability (COR) analysis revealed that retest variability of the new cards is superior to that of an earlier prototype at low to mid spatial frequencies.

Long-term visual pathology in children with significant perinatal complications.

Eye research in infants who experience significant perinatal complications has been restricted to evaluation of structural ocular disease and spatial vision, and results show that these aspects of vision are at increased risk for abnormal or delayed development. To expand upon previous work, a battery of 17 vision tests was employed to assess, comprehensively, long-term outcome of functional vision. Seventy-six children (38 males, 38 females), between the corrected ages of 2 years 11 months and 10 years 2 months (mean 6y 6mo) with various significant complications (e.

Prevalence of overweight and obesity in a provincial population of Canadian preschool children.

Background: More and more school-aged children in Canada and elsewhere are becoming overweight or obese. Many countries are now reporting a similar trend among preschool children. However, little information is available on the prevalence of overweight and obesity among preschool children in Canada.

A double-masked, randomized control trial of iron supplementation in early infancy in healthy term breast-fed infants.

Objectives: To test whether iron supplementation affects hematologic, biochemical, and developmental status in term breast-fed infants.

Study Design: Term breast-fed infants (n=77) were randomly selected to receive either 7.5 mg per day of elemental iron as ferrous sulfate or placebo from 1 to 6 months of age.

Testing young infants with the Welch Allyn suresight non-cycloplegic autorefractor.

Both eyes of 74 healthy 2-12-month-old human infants were refracted twice with the new Welch Allyn SureSight non-cycloplegic autorefractor. At least one reliable estimate of sphere and cylinder was obtained from both eyes of all babies attempted, and 88% of infants contributed two estimates from each eye. These measurements were collected in less than 2 min.

Using a single test to measure human contrast sensitivity from early childhood to maturity.

Despite the emerging scientific and clinical importance of measuring human contrast sensitivity (CS), developmental data are sparse, especially those obtained with a single methodology. We used a new, time-efficient, psychophysical card procedure to evaluate binocular CS in groups of 20 4- to 9-yr-olds and 10 adults. Combined with data from infants and toddlers obtained previously with the same method, our results show that CS is adult-like by 9 years of age.

From infant to child: the dynamics of cognitive change in the second year of life.

The authors review several key areas of early cognitive development in which an abrupt shift in ability at the end of the second year of life has been traditionally assumed. These areas include deferred imitation, self-recognition, language, and categorization. Contrary to much conventional theorizing, the evidence shows robust continuities in all domains of early cognitive development.

Improving the effectiveness of the infant contrast sensitivity card procedure.

Based on results from an earlier prototype, custom software and printing techniques were developed to construct a new card-based test of contrast sensitivity (CS) for nonverbal subjects. Compared with the prototype, the new CS card test contains three improvements: (1) larger, more salient test gratings; (2) higher contrast warm-up cards for each spatial frequency set; and (3) smaller contrast step size between adjacent cards. The success of the new cards was evaluated by testing 3.