Infant visual sustained attention and respiratory sinus arrhythmia
Abstract
Infants were studied cross-sectionally at 14, 20, and 26 weeks of age. They were presented with varying and complex patterns on a TV screen. Two-thirds of the presentations were accompanied by an "interrupting stimulus" in the periphery delayed in time from the onset of fixation on the central stimulus. The infants were not easily distracted from looking at the central stimulus when the presentation of the interrupting stimulus occurred at the point of maximal heart rate (HR) deceleration. However, if the presentation occurred at the end of the HR response, the infants were easily distracted. Infants with large amounts of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA; i.e., HR variability) in a baseline recording were less distractible during the deceleration-defined trials than were infants with low amounts of RSA. High-RSA infants also showed larger HR deceleration on these trials than did the low-RSA infants. These results are consistent with a model positing that sustained HR lowering during visual fixation is an index of active attention and that RSA is an index of voluntary, sustained attention in infants.
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Heart-rate variability, or vagal tone, has been linked to several measures of cognitive and emotional processes involving attention and stimulus appraisal.
“Heart-rate variability, or vagal tone, has been linked to several measures of cognitive and emotional processes involving attention and stimulus appraisal (Lacey & Lacey, 1958;Porges, Arnold, & Forbes, 1973;Richards, 1987;Wenger, 1941).”
From Infant and parent factors associated with early maternal sensitivity: A caregiver-attachment systems approach (2007) · cites this paper as Richards, 1987
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“The importance of parasympathetic deficiency in GAD becomes clearer when one considers other research that indicates that stronger vagal tone is significantly related to more adaptive attentional deployment (Porges, 1992; Richards, 1987).”
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“The Richards (1987) study reported that infants with high respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were less distractable than infants characterized by low RSA.”
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“Infants are far less distractible during periods of sustained attention in both experimental laboratory settings (Richards 1985a, 1987, 1988, 1989b, 1997b; Casey & Richards 1988) as well as in more naturalistic settings during object manipulation and examination (Lansink & Richards 1997, Oakes &…”
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“Such combined measures are already being used in some labs to gather from individual infants, simultaneously, both looking times and other dependent measures such as heart rate (Colombo, Richman, Shaddy, Follmer Green-hoot & Maikranz, 2001; Richards, 1987) and ERPs (Reynolds & Richards, 2005).”
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“Of importance, across numerous studies, these very traits have been associated with modest RSA withdrawal to emotion evocation and attention demanding tasks (e.g., Marcovitch et al., 2010; Richards, 1987; Suess, Porges, & Plude, 1994).”
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“…greater ability to focus attention, and greater ability to self-soothe and explore novel stimuli (DiPietro & Porges, 1991; Fox, 1989a; Hofheimer & Lawson, 1988; Linnemeyer & Porges, 1986; Porter, Porges, & Marshall, 1988; Richards, 1987; Stifter & Fox, 1990; Stifter, Fox & Porges, 1989).”
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“Richards (1987, 1997) has suggested that SA represents active encoding; this logically implies that some parameter of SA (e.g., greater amount or depth of SA) should predict improved infant performance on cognitive tasks.”
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“Other studies showed that protocol length and infant’s attention to challenges are important factors in eliciting autonomic responses (Bazhenova et al., 2001; Richards, 1987).”
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“Specifically, vagal activity when an organism is at rest is regarded as a mechanism for maintaining homeostasis (Richards, 1987).”
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“Attending RSA changes in response to voluntary sustained attention during nonchallenging visual fixation in infants (Richards, 1987) and college students (Berntson, Cacioppo, & Fieldstone, 1996).”
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“In addition to general mean HR and variability, we were interested in patterns of heart activity reflecting decelerative phases during which active cognitive processing is believed to occur (Colombo et al. 2004; Richards 1987 ).”
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BackgroundMethodResultInfluentialSelf-citationLevels-of-Processing Effects in Infant Memory?
Adler, S. A., Gerhardstein, P. C., & Rovee‐Collier, C. (1998) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1998.tb06188.x · Cited by 33 · see citing works
“Researchers using a number of different paradigms and measures have reported that very young infants can selectively attend to one of two or more simultaneously presented stimuli (Bahrick, Walker, & Neisser, 1981; Fagan, 1970; Richards, 1987; Ruff, 1975).”
BackgroundWass, S. V. (2018) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2018.03.029 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
Richards, J. E. (1994) · Psychophysiology · doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.1994.tb02212.x · Cited by 28 · see citing works
Self-citationWhat Habituates in Infant Visual Habituation? A Psychophysiological Analysis
Colombo, J. A., Shaddy, D. J., Anderson, C. J., Gibson, L. J., Blaga, O. M., & Kannass, K. N. (2010) · Infancy · doi:10.1111/j.1532-7078.2009.00012.x · Cited by 25 · see citing works
Haley, D. W., GRUNAU, R. E., Weinberg, J., Keidar, A., & Oberlander, T. F. (2010) · Infant Behavior and Development · doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2009.10.007 · Cited by 24 · see citing works
“The capacity to withdraw parasympathetic activity in response to a challenge is thought to be adaptive and has been linked to cognitive performance (e.g., Bornstein & Suess, 2000; Richards, 1987), emotion regulation (e.”
A refractory period for the heart rate response in infant visual attention
Casey, B. J., & Richards, J. E. (1991) · Developmental Psychobiology · doi:10.1002/dev.420240503 · Cited by 24 · see citing works
Self-citationEmotion‐Related Regulation: The Construct and its Measurement
Eisenberg, N., Morris, A. S., & Spinrad, T. L. (2005) · Wiley eBooks · doi:10.1002/9780470756676.ch21 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
Hicks, J. M., & Richards, J. E. (1998) · Infant Behavior and Development · doi:10.1016/s0163-6383(98)90030-3 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Self-citationHeart Rate Offset Responses to Visual Stimuli in Infants from 14 to 26 Weeks of Age
Richards, J. E. (1988) · Psychophysiology · doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.1988.tb01243.x · Cited by 21 · see citing works
Self-citationSustained visual attention in 8-week-old infants
Richards, J. E. (1989) · Infant Behavior and Development · doi:10.1016/0163-6383(89)90024-6 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
Self-citationToddlers’ physiological response to parent's mobile device distraction and technoference
Porter, C. L., Coyne, S. M., Chojnacki, N. A., McDaniel, B. T., Reschke, P. J., & Stockdale, L. (2024) · Developmental Psychobiology · doi:10.1002/dev.22460 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
Empty‐headed dynamical model of infant visual foraging
Robertson, S. (2013) · Developmental Psychobiology · doi:10.1002/dev.21165 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
“For example, motor and cardiac measures reveal a rapid increase in 3-monthold infants’ attention at the beginning of a look (Richards, 1987; Robertson et al., 2001a), and EEG measures show that 3-month-olds’ covert attention to the next target of fixation during free looking increases just before the current look ends…”
BackgroundIndividual Differences in Infant Cognition
Colombo, J. A. (1997) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-012218870-1/50010-5 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
Fox, N. A. (1989) · New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development · doi:10.1002/cd.23219894506 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
Autonomic nervous system correlates of temperament
Healy, B. T. (1989) · Infant Behavior and Development · doi:10.1016/0163-6383(89)90040-4 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
Berry, D. J., Palmer, A. R., Distefano, R., & Masten, A. S. (2019) · Development and Psychopathology · doi:10.1017/s0954579419000683 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
“, 2016), ranging from better behavioral regulation to frustrating social and cognitive challenges (Calkins, Smith, Gill, & Johnson, 1998; Forbes, Fox, Cohn, Galles, & Kovacs, 2006; Lewis, Hitchcock, & Sullivan, 2004; Shahrestani, Steward, Quintana, Hickie, & Guastella, 2014), to executive attention (Feldman, 2009; Ric…”
Sustained attention in the face of distractors: A study of children with Rett syndrome.
Rose, S. A., Wass, S. V., Jankowski, J. J., Feldman, J. F., & Djukic, A. (2017) · Neuropsychology · doi:10.1037/neu0000369 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
“To overcome these limitations, sustained attention was assessed here by building on tasks assessing how well children can visually concentrate on a target while ignoring distractors (Oakes, Kannass, & Shaddy, 2002; Richards, 1987; Ruff & Rothbart, 1996).”
Infant physiological activity and the early emergence of social communication
Bradshaw, J. L., & Abney, D. H. (2021) · Developmental Psychobiology · doi:10.1002/dev.22145 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Allostasis and metastasis: The yin and yang of childhood self-regulation
Wass, S. V. (2021) · Development and Psychopathology · doi:10.1017/s0954579421000833 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
“As we described in the section “’Passive viewer’ approaches to the regulation of emotion and cognition,” we know that a child’s arousal state can influence how they react when a complex or slow-paced new stimulus is presented (Richards, 1987; Van der Meere & Sergeant, 1988) – either engaging with it, or not.”
BackgroundInfluentialPalser, E. R., Morris, N., Roy, A. R. K., Holley, S. R., Veziris, C. R., Watson, C., Deleon, J., Miller, Z., Miller, B. L., Gorno‐Tempini, M. L., et al. (2021) · Biological Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108203 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
“…nervous system fluctuates with moment-to-moment engagement and disengagement with the environment and, thus, is important for interpersonal sensitivity, attention allocation, and social attunement (Friedman, 2007; Giuliano et al., 2018; Porges, 2007; Richards, 1987; Thayer & Lane, 2000).”
- Authors
- Richards, J. E.
- Affiliations
- University of South Carolina (US)
- Corresponding author
- Richards, John E.
- ORCID
- Richards, John E.
- Venue
- Child Development
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1987-04
- Volume
- 58
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 488
- ISSN
- 0009-3920 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2121958234
- Cited by
- 180
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 3 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 7
- FWCI
- 4.05
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Child Development (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (5r23hd018942-02)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1 R23 HD18942-01A)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine › Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Control
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Endocrine and Autonomic Systems › Neuroscience of respiration and sleep
- Keywords
- respiratory sinus arrhythmia, heart rate variability, distractibility, visual fixation, heart rate deceleration, voluntary attention, infant development, attentional control
- MeSH terms
- Arrhythmia, Sinus, Attention, Fixation, Ocular, Heart Rate, Humans, Infant, Respiration, Time Factors, Visual Perception
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