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Updated: Jul 10, 2026
Classical Short-Delay Eyeblink Conditioning in One-Year-Old Children
Published on: September 1, 2018
Preterm infants' timing strategies to optical collisions
Nanna S Kayed1, Hanne Farstad, Audrey L H van der Meer
1Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway. Nanna.Kayed@svt.ntnu.no
Insights
Preterm infants at 26 weeks often struggle to time defensive blinks, with some persisting in using an unreliable visual angle strategy instead of a time-based one. This difficulty may signal potential perceptuo-motor issues requiring further study.
Area of Science:
- Developmental neuroscience
- Infant motor control
- Perceptual development
Background:
- Infants exhibit defensive blinking in response to approaching virtual objects.
- Full-term infants transition from visual angle to time-based blink timing strategies between 22 and 30 weeks of age.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine the blink timing strategies employed by preterm infants.
- To assess if preterm infants can adapt their blink timing strategies.
Main Methods:
- Eight preterm infants were evaluated at 26 weeks corrected age.
- Longitudinal data were collected for three infants at 22, 26, and 30 weeks.
- Infants were exposed to virtual objects approaching at varying velocities and accelerations.
Main Results:
- At 26 weeks, some preterm infants struggled with accelerating approaches, indicating reliance on visual angle cues.
- A subset of infants successfully used time-based blink timing, adapting to different approach speeds.
- One infant consistently used an angular velocity strategy, leading to late blinks even at 30 weeks.
Conclusions:
- Preterm infants' difficulty in shifting blink timing strategies may indicate a lack of adaptive flexibility.
- Failure to adopt effective timing strategies could be an early marker for perceptuo-motor problems.
- Further investigation is warranted to understand the implications of these timing deficits.
Background:
A virtual object approaching on a collision course will elicit defensive blinking in infants. Previous research has shown that when precisely timing their blinks, full-term infants shift from using a strategy based on visual angle/angular velocity to a strategy based on time between 22 and 30 weeks of age.
Aim:
To investigate which timing strategy preterm infants use to determine when to make the defensive blink.
Methods:
Eight preterm infants were tested at 26 weeks, corrected for prematurity. For three of these infants, longitudinal data at 22, 26, and 30 weeks were available. The virtual object approached the infants with different constant velocities and constant accelerations.
Results:
At 26 weeks, three infants blinked when the virtual object's visual angle reached a threshold value causing them to have problems with fast, accelerating approaches. Four infants blinked when the virtual object was a certain time away, allowing them to blink in time on all approach conditions. One infant stood out because he relied on a timing strategy based on angular velocity on all three test sessions, causing him to blink late on a large number of trials even at 30 weeks.
Conclusion:
As good timing is essential for successful interaction with the environment, the inability to switch from a timing strategy that is prone to errors to a strategy that enables successful defensive blinking reflects lack of flexibility to adjust appropriately to local circumstances. This might be an early indication of perceptuo-motor problems that warrants further investigation.
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