Predictors of language and reading outcomes in 12-year-old children born very preterm.

Aim: To investigate predictors of language and reading outcomes in 12-year-old Swedish children born very preterm (<32 gestational weeks) in 2004-2007.

Method: Children born very preterm (n = 78, 43 girls), and term-born controls (n = 50, 32 girls), were examined on verbal IQ, semantic and phonemic fluency, sentence recall, reading fluency, word and phonological decoding at 12 years of age. The results were related to neonatal characteristics, language development, measured with Bayley-III, at 2.

Mri findings, looking behaviour and affect recognition in very preterm children: A pilot study.

Children born very preterm often exhibit atypical gaze behaviors, affect recognition difficulties and are at risk for cerebral white matter damage. This study explored links between these sequalae. In 24 12-year-old children born very preterm, ventricle size using Evans and posterior ventricle indices, and corpus callosum area were used to measure white matter thickness.

Brain MRI findings and their association with visual impairment in young adolescents born very preterm.

Purpose: Very preterm birth increases risk for neonatal white matter injury, but there is limited data on to what extent this persists into adolescence and how this relates to ophthalmological outcomes. The aim of this study was to assess brain MRI findings in 12-year-old children born very preterm compared to controls and their association with concurrent ophthalmological outcomes.

Methods: We included 47 children born very preterm and 22 full-term controls (gestational age <32 and >37 weeks, respectively).

Different aspects of visual perception are important for 12-year social functioning depending on gestational age.

Aim: Perceptual mechanisms in social functioning might promote interventions. We investigated relations between visual perception and social functioning, in preterm children.

Methods: A prospective preterm cohort born in Uppsala County, Sweden, in 2004-2007 and 49 full-term controls were examined at 12 years.

Antenatal steroids and neurodevelopment in 12-year-old children born extremely preterm.

Aim: To investigate neurodevelopmental outcome in 12-year-old children born very preterm in relation to perinatal, neonatal and socioeconomic variables. To examine whether previously described positive effects of antenatal steroids on cognition persist at 12 years.

Methods: Prospective cohort, 78 children with gestational ages 22.

Better Language - Faster Helper: The Relation Between Spontaneous Instrumental Helping Action and Language Ability in Family-Reared and Institutionalized Toddlers.

Background: Prosocial behavior is the key component of social and interpersonal relations. One of the elements of prosociality is helping behavior, which emerges already in early childhood. Researchers have identified several domains of helping behavior: instrumental helping, comforting another person, and sharing resources with others.

Social perception: How do 6-month-old infants look at pointing gestures?

The study explored 6-month-old infants' ability to follow a pointing gesture in a dynamic social context. The infants were presented with a video of a model pointing to one of two toys. The pointing gesture was performed either normally (with arm and hand pointing at the same direction), with a stick, or the model's arm and hand pointing in different directions (at different toys).

Extrapolation and direct matching mediate anticipation in infancy.

Why are infants able to anticipate occlusion events and other people's actions but not the movement of self-propelled objects? This study investigated infant and adult anticipatory gaze shifts during observation of self-propelled objects and human goal-directed actions. Six-month-old infants anticipated self-propelled balls but not human actions. This demonstrates that different processes mediate the ability to anticipate human actions (direct matching) versus self-propelled objects (extrapolation).

How infants look at others' manual interactions: the role of experience.

Human actions are often embedded in contexts of social interactions. However, just a few studies that have explored the development of infants' understanding of other people's manual actions do take this variable into account. In this study, 10- and 18-month-old infants were shown three interactive manual actions which the infants could or could not perform themselves.

Development of social perception: a conversation study of 6-, 12- and 36-month-old children.

A conversation is made up of visual and auditory signals in a complex flow of events. What is the relative importance of these components for young children's ability to maintain attention on a conversation? In the present set of experiments the visual and auditory signals were disentangled in four filmed events. The visual events were either accompanied by the speech sounds of the conversation or by matched motor sounds and the auditory events by either the natural visual turn taking of the conversation or a matched turn taking of toy trucks.

Preverbal infants anticipate that food will be brought to the mouth: an eye tracking study of manual feeding and flying spoons.

This study relies on eye tracking technology to investigate how humans perceive others' feeding actions. Results demonstrate that 6-month-olds (n = 54) anticipate that food is brought to the mouth when observing an adult feeding herself with a spoon. Still, they fail to anticipate self-propelled (SP) spoons that move toward the mouth and manual combing actions directed toward the head.

Goal anticipation during action observation is influenced by synonymous action capabilities, a puzzling developmental study.

Eighteen- and 25-month-old human toddlers' ability to manually solve a puzzle and their ability to anticipate the goal during observation of similar actions were investigated. Results demonstrate that goal anticipation during action observation is dependent on manual ability, both on a group level (only 25-month-olds solved the manual task and anticipated the goal during observation) and individually within the older age group (r (xy) = 0.53).

Integrated global motion influences smooth pursuit in infants.

Smooth pursuit eye movements (SP) were studied in 5- and 9-month-old infants and adults in response to a rhombus oscillating horizontally behind three spatially separated vertical occluders. During motion, the rhombus vertices were never visible. Thus the perception of the global motion of the rhombus required integration of its moving visible segments.

Predictive tracking over occlusions by 4-month-old infants.

Two experiments investigated how 16-20-week-old infants visually tracked an object that oscillated on a horizontal trajectory with a centrally placed occluder. To determine the principles underlying infants' tendency to shift gaze to the exiting side before the object arrives, occluder width, oscillation frequency, and motion amplitude were manipulated resulting in occlusion durations between 0.20 and 1.

Learning about occlusion: initial assumptions and rapid adjustments.

We examined 6-month-olds abilities to represent occluded objects, using a corneal-reflection eye-tracking technique. Experiment 1 compared infants' ability to extrapolate the current pre-occlusion trajectory with their ability to base predictions on recent experiences of novel object motions. In the first condition infants performed at asymptote ( approximately 2/3 accurate predictions) from the first occlusion passage.