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Updated: Jul 23, 2025
A Within-subjects Experimental Protocol to Assess the Effects of Social Input on Infant EEG
Published on: May 3, 2017
A protocol for social interactive assessment of infant attention set-shifting between 12-24 months of age
Xing Xi Tan1, Victoria Leong1,2
1Division of Psychology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Insights
This study introduces a new parent-guided task to measure infant attention set-shifting in children aged 12-24 months. The method assesses how social interaction influences early executive function development.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Executive functions, including attention set-shifting, are crucial for cognitive development.
- Assessing early executive functions in infants presents methodological challenges.
Purpose of the Study:
- To present a novel social interactive protocol for assessing infant attention set-shifting.
- To measure the impact of parent-child interactions on early executive function skills.
Main Methods:
- Adaptation of a sequential touching object categorization task for infants aged 12-24 months.
- Utilizing a parent-scaffolded approach to shift infant attention from high-salience to low-salience object properties (e.g., shape vs. material).
- Direct measurement of parent-child interaction effects on attention set-shifting.
Main Results:
- The protocol allows for direct assessment of parent-child interaction's influence on attention set-shifting.
- Demonstrates a method to evaluate how social scaffolding facilitates attentional flexibility in infants.
Conclusions:
- Parent-child interaction plays a significant role in developing early executive functions like attention set-shifting.
- This protocol offers a valuable tool for studying infant cognitive development and the impact of social context.
Abstract:
This protocol describes an adaptation of a classic sequential touching object categorisation task to assess infant attention set-shifting, suitable for ages 12-24 months. The task is conducted in a social interactive context with a parent, who scaffolds their infants' attention shift from high-salience to low-salience dimensional properties of objects (e.g., shape vs material). This task is adapted from Ellis and Oakes (2006), where 14 month-old infants were able to flexibly attend to both shape and material. In this paper, we present a methodological innovation which permits the direct measurement of the effect of parent-child interactions on an early developing executive function skill. This novel social interactive protocol permits direct assessment of the effect of parent-child interaction on an early executive function skill, attention set-shifting.•The parental role is to scaffold a shift in their child's attention from a high salient (e.g. shape) to a low-salient (e.g. material) dimension of the stimulus set.•The protocol is suitable for infants aged between 12 and 24 months.
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