C-sections could slow babies' ability to focus

Being delivered through a cesarean section may influence a babies' ability to concentrate on a particular area or object of interest, a new study has claimed.
It slows their spatial attention, which plays a role in how well they are able to prioritise and focus on a particular area or object that is of interest, the researchers said.
The study, by Scott Adler and Audrey Wong-Kee-You of York University in Canada, is the first on birth experiences to compare the spatial attention of babies delivered vaginally to those born through cesarean sections.
The study shows that the type of birth experience influences one form of infants' attention, and possibly any cognitive process that relies on spatial attention.

It consisted of two experiments involving different groups of three-month-old infants. Their eye movement was monitored, as an indication of what caught the babies' attention.
Eyes cannot move to where someone's attention is not directed. Therefore, disruptions or changes in the mechanisms involved in attention would manifest in subsequent eye movement.

The first experiment, a spatial cueing task, tested the stimulus-driven spatial attention of 24 babies.
A peripheral cue was presented to the edge of their eye line, indicating the subsequent location of a target stimulus.
This activated infants' saccadic (or quick, jerky) eye movement, so that their eyes turned faster towards the place where a target was subsequently presented.

The stimulus-driven, reflexive attention and saccadic eye movement of those babies born via a cesarean were found to be slowed compared to those of vaginally delivered infants.
The researchers believe this is because cesarean delivered babies' brain development was impacted by their method of birth and their ability to initially allocate their spatial attention. It is still unclear whether this effect lasts throughout a lifetime.
The researchers found no difference in the cognitively driven, voluntary attention of babies with different birth experiences.
This followed the second experiment, a visual expectation task, involving 12 babies. Stimuli predictably and alternately appeared on the left and right side of a monitor.

It increased saccadic eye movement as babies anticipated where the forthcoming stimulus would appear.
Such anticipatory eye movements are linked to cognitive-driven spatial attention.
"The results suggests that birth experience influences the initial state of brain functioning and should, consequently, be considered in our understanding of brain development," said Adler.
"The findings add a potential psychological implication to the roster of impacts that cesarean section delivery might have," Wong-Kee-You added.
The study was published in the journal Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics.