Objective: Attention capacities are critical for adaptive functioning and development. Reliable assessment measures are needed for the study of attention capacities in early childhood. In the current study, we investigated the factor structure of the Utrecht Tasks of Attention in Toddlers Using Eye-tracking (UTATE) test battery that assesses attention capacities in 18-month-old toddlers with eye-tracking techniques. Method: The factor structure of 13 measures of attention capacities, based on four eye-tracking tasks, was investigated in a sample of 95 healthy toddlers (18 months of age) using confirmatory factor analysis. Results: Results showed that a three-factor model best fitted the data. The latent constructs reflected an orienting, alerting, and executive attention system. Conclusion: This study showed support for a three-factor model of attention capacities in 18-month-old toddlers. Further study is needed to investigate whether the model can also be used with children at risk of attention problems.
AndradeB. F.BrodeurD. A.WaschbuschD. A.StewartS. H.McGeeR. (2009). Selective and sustained attention as predictors of social problems in children with typical and disordered attention abilities. Journal of Attention Disorders, 12, 342-352. doi:10.1177/1087054708320440
2.
AtkinsonJ.BraddickO. (2012). Visual attention in the first years: Typical development and developmental disorders. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 54, 589-595. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8749.2012.04294.x
3.
BreckenridgeK.BraddickO.AtkinsonJ. (2013). The organization of attention in typical development: A new preschool attention test battery. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13, 271-288. doi:10.1111/bjdp.12004
4.
BreslauJ.MillerE.BreslauN.BohnertK.LuciaV.SchweitzerJ. (2009). The impact of early behavior disturbances on academic achievement in high school. Pediatrics, 123, 1472-1476. doi:10.1542/peds/2008-1406
5.
ButcherP. R.KalverboerA. F.GeuzeR. H. (2000). Infants’ shifts of gaze from a central to a peripheral stimulus: A longitudinal study of development between 6 and 26 weeks. Infant Behavior and Development, 23, 3-21. doi:10.1016/S0163-6383(00)00031-X
6.
ChanR. C.WangL.YeJ.LeungW. W.MokM. Y. (2008). A psychometric study of the Test of Everyday Attention for Children in the Chinese setting. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 23, 455-466. doi:10.1016/j.acn.2008.03.007
7.
ColomboJ. (2001). The development of visual attention in infancy. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 337-367. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.337
8.
ColomboJ. (2002). Infant attention grows up: The emergence of a developmental cognitive neuroscience perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 196-200. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.00199
9.
De JongM.VerhoevenM.HoogeI. T. C.Van BaarA. L. (2013). I spy with my little eye: The Utrecht tasks for attention in toddlers using eye tracking. Manuscript submitted for publication.
10.
GredebäckG.StasiewiczD.Falck-YtterT.RosanderK.von HofstenC. (2009). Action type and goal type modulate goal-directed gaze shifts in 14-month-old infants. Developmental Psychology, 45, 1190-1194.
11.
HolmqvistK.NyströmM.AnderssonR.DewhurstR.JardozkaH.VandeWeijerJ. (2011). Eye tracking: A comprehensive guide to methods and measures. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
12.
HuL. T.BentlerP. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6, 1-55. doi:10.1080/10705519909540118
13.
HunniusS.BekkeringH. (2010). The early development of object knowledge: A study of infants’ visual anticipations during action observation. Developmental Psychology, 46, 446-454. doi:10.1037/a0016543
14.
HunniusS.GeuzeR. H.Van GeertP. (2006). Associations between the developmental trajectories of visual scanning and disengagement of attention in infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 29, 108-125. doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2005.08.007
15.
JonesW.CarrK.KlinA. (2008). Absence of preferential looking to the eyes of approaching adults predicts level of social disability in 2-year-old toddlers with autism spectrum disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry, 65, 946-954.
16.
ManlyT.AndersonV.Nimmo-SmithI.TurnerA.WatsonP.RobertsonI. H. (2001). The differential assessment of children’s attention: The Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA-Ch), normative sample and ADHD performance. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 1065-1081. doi:10.1111/1469-7610.00806
17.
MarshH. W. (1989). Confirmatory factor analyses of multitrait-multimethod data: Many problems and a few solutions. Applied Psychological Measurement, 13, 335-361. doi:10.1177/014662168901300402
18.
MezzacappaE. (2004). Alerting, orienting, and executive attention: Developmental properties and sociodemographic correlates in an epidemiological sample of young, urban children. Child Development, 75, 1373-1386. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00746.x
19.
NyströmM.HolmqvistK. (2010). An adaptive algorithm for fixation, saccade, and glissade detection in eyetracking data. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 188-204. doi:10.3758/BRM.42.1.188
20.
PaulusM.HunniusS.BekkeringH. (2011). Can 14- to 20-month-old children learn that a tool serves multiple purposes? A developmental study on children’s action goal prediction. Vision Research, 51, 955-960. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2010.12.012
21.
PosnerM. I.PetersenS. E. (1990). The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 13, 25-42. doi:10.1146/annurev.ne.13.030190.000325
22.
R Core Team. (2012). R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Software]. Available from http://www.R-project.org
23.
RoseS. A.FeldmanJ. F.JankowskiJ. J. (2002). Processing speed in the 1st year of life: A longitudinal study of preterm and full-term infants. Developmental Psychology, 38, 895-902.
24.
RosseelY. (2012). lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48, 1-36.
25.
RuffH. A.RothbartM. K. (1996). Attention in early development. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
26.
Schermelleh-EngelK.MoosbruggerH.MüllerH. (2003). Evaluating the fit of structural equation models: Tests of significance and descriptive goodness-of-fit measures. Methods of Psychological Research Online, 8, 23-74.
27.
SmeetsJ. B. J.HoogeI. T. C. (2003). Nature of variability in saccades. Journal of Neurophysiology, 90, 12-20. doi:10.1152/jn.01075.2002
28.
SteeleA.Karmiloff-SmithA.CornishK.ScerifG. (2012). The multiple subfunctions of attention: Differential developmental gateways to literacy and numeracy. Child Development, 83, 2028-2041. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01809.x
Van BaarA. L.VermaasJ.KnotsE.de KleineM. J. K.SoonsP. (2009). Functioning at school age of moderately preterm children born at 32 to 36 weeks’ gestational age. Pediatrics, 124, 251-257.
