Attention Development in the First Years of Life: association with environmental factors and individual differences
Sebastián Moyano, University of Granada, Spain
Tuesday, 03 March 2020, 3pm to 4pm
Anna Watts Building, room 10.62 "Necker," Dept of Experimental Psychology, Oxford, OX2 6GG
Hosted by Karla Holmbo
Attention is one of the most important cognitive domains in everyday functioning. It allows us not only to maintain a high sensitivity state towards incoming information, but also to select and prioritise which information should be processed and to control our behaviour and thoughts. These control processes are related to the development of executive attention, which serves as a mechanism of voluntary control over behaviour, thoughts and emotions. The importance of executive attention relies in its association with self-regulation, externalising and internalising problems, academic achievement or social adjustment, although the development of executive attention could be affected by environmental factors such as socioeconomic status, household disorganisation, parenting, etc.
In this talk I will present the current projects of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Group (LabNCD) of the University of Granada related to attention development. In our longitudinal study, we aim to characterise the development of executive attention in infants across the first two years of life, while in our accelerated longitudinal study our main goal is to identify the development of the three attentional networks, with a special focus on executive attention. In both studies, we aim to explore the association between language acquisition and attention control, as it is known that both processes are closely related.