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Published on: March 17, 2023
Joint engagement in infants and its relationship to their visual impairment measurements
Andrea Urqueta Alfaro1, Valerie S Morash2, Daisy Lei2
1Envision Research Institute, 610 N. Main St., Wichita, KS 67203, USA.
Insights
Visually impaired infants engage in joint attention, crucial for development. Reduced contrast sensitivity, not just visual acuity, predicts this engagement, highlighting a key measurement for research.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Ophthalmology
- Pediatrics
Background:
- Joint engagement, coordinating attention with a partner and shared focus, benefits sighted infants' development (language, socio-emotional, theory of mind).
- Current joint engagement measures rely on visual behaviors, limiting studies in infants with visual impairments.
- Understanding joint engagement in visually impaired infants is crucial for early intervention and developmental support.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate joint engagement in infants with visual impairments.
- To identify which visual measurements predict joint engagement in this population.
- To inform future research methodologies for studying joint engagement in infants with visual impairments.
Main Methods:
- A naturalistic observational study recorded 20 infants (ages 1.08 and 1.62 years) with varying visual impairments during free play with caregivers.
- Videos were coded to quantify the percentage of time dyads spent in joint engagement.
- Infants' visual impairment was assessed using visual acuity and contrast sensitivity tests (visual evoked potential, preferential looking).
Main Results:
- All visually impaired infants demonstrated joint engagement, with a significant increase observed between the younger and older age groups.
- Reduced contrast sensitivity, measured via preferential looking, significantly predicted the duration of joint engagement across both age groups.
- Visual acuity alone did not predict joint engagement duration, contrasting with previous research assumptions.
Conclusions:
- Visually impaired infants actively participate in joint engagement, which increases with age.
- Contrast sensitivity is a critical, and previously underestimated, factor in joint engagement for infants with visual impairments.
- Future research should prioritize contrast sensitivity alongside visual acuity when assessing joint engagement in visually impaired infants.
Abstract:
Coordination of attention between a social partner and an external focus of shared interest, called joint engagement, is associated with positive developmental outcomes such as better language, socio-emotional, and theory of mind skills in sighted infants. Current measures of joint engagement rely on an infant's visual behaviors, making it difficult to study joint engagement in infants with low or no vision. In a naturalistic observational study, 20 infants with various levels of visual impairments - mean ages: 1.08 years (N=9) and 1.62 years (N=18), were videotaped during 30-min free play sessions with their caregivers. Seven infants were tested at both ages. Videos were coded to determine the percentage of time the dyads participated in joint engagement. Results showed that all visually impaired infants participated in joint engagement, with a significant increase between earlier and later ages. Infants' visual impairment levels were described in terms of visual acuity and contrast sensitivity as measured using both visual evoked potential and preferential looking techniques. Of the visual measurements, infants' reduction in contrast sensitivity measured with preferential looking, alone, predicted the infants' percentage of time in joint engagement across ages. Contrary to prior research that exclusively focused on visual acuity, this finding supports the need to include contrast sensitivity measurements in studies with visually impaired infants.
