Abstract
Children acquire attention skills rapidly during early childhood as their brains undergo vast neural development. Attention is well studied in the adult brain, yet due to the challenges associated with scanning young children, investigations in early childhood are sparse. Here, we examined the relationship between age, attention and functional connectivity (FC) during passive viewing in multiple intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs) in 60 typically developing girls between 4 and 7 years whose sustained, selective and executive attention skills were assessed. Visual, auditory, sensorimotor, default mode (DMN), dorsal attention (DAN), ventral attention (VAN), salience, and frontoparietal ICNs were identified via Independent Component Analysis and subjected to a dual regression. Individual spatial maps were regressed against age and attention skills, controlling for age. All ICNs except the VAN showed regions of increasing FC with age. Attention skills were associated with FC in distinct networks after controlling for age: selective attention positively related to FC in the DAN; sustained attention positively related to FC in visual and auditory ICNs; and executive attention positively related to FC in the DMN and visual ICN. These findings suggest distributed network integration across this age range and highlight how multiple ICNs contribute to attention skills in early childhood.
Highlights
Childhood is a crucial period in a child’s development when many cognitive skills, including top-down attention, are rapidly maturing (Brown and Jernigan, 2012)
We investigated the association between age and functional connectivity (FC) within sensory and cognitive intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs), and the association between FC in these ICNs and attention skills, in early childhood
Focusing on the age range of 4–7 years in order to capture the detailed changes that occur during this period, we show in young girls that age is positively associated with increasing FC in most sensory and cognitive ICNs
Summary
Childhood is a crucial period in a child’s development when many cognitive skills, including top-down attention, are rapidly maturing (Brown and Jernigan, 2012). For many children, this is the beginning of formal reading instruction and attention skills appear to be foundational for reading acquisition (Franceschini et al, 2012). Weak attention skills can place children at a disadvantage in school, which can have lifelong consequences on academic attainment, employment, and social skills (Rueda et al, 2010; Stevens and Bavelier, 2012). We have a limited understanding of the neural basis of inter-individual variability in early childhood attention skills
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