quantifying-learning-young-infants-tracking-leg-actions-during

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

Task-specific actions emerge from spontaneous movement during infancy. It has been proposed that task-specific actions emerge through a discovery-learning ...

University of Southern California

Fertile turkey eggs after 24 days of incubation were vaccinated in ovo with a commercial live attenuated subtype A avian pneumovirus (APV) vaccine. Hatchability was not adversely affected. When a high dose (10 times maximum commercial dose) of vaccine was tested in maternal antibody negative (MA-) eggs, mild clinical signs developed in a small proportion of the poults for 1-4 days only. Post-vaccination antibody titres at 3 weeks of age were significantly higher than those seen when the same dose was administered by eyedrop or spray at day-old. A low dose (end of shelf-life titre) of vaccine given to MA- eggs did not cause disease and vaccinated poults were 100% protected against virulent APV challenge at 3 or 5 weeks of age. Post-vaccination antibody titres reached significant levels at 3 weeks of age, whereas those from MA- poults vaccinated by spray at day-old with a similar low dose did not. In a 'worst-case' scenario, maternal antibody positive (MA+) poults vaccinated in ovo with the low dose were still 77% protected against clinical disease, despite lack of seroconversion. The recommended commercial dose of vaccine given to MA- eggs in ovo induced 100% protection against virulent APV challenge for up to 14 weeks of age, even though post-vaccination antibody titres had dropped to insignificant levels at this age. In ovo vaccination with a mixture of the recommended commercial doses of live APV and Newcastle disease (ND) vaccines had no detrimental affect on the efficacy of the APV vaccine. This is the first report of the successful use of an APV vaccine being given in ovo. The results indicate that for turkeys, in ovo vaccination with a live attenuated APV vaccine is safe and effective against virulent challenge and comparable with vaccination by conventional methods.

Immunity to avian pneumovirus infection in turkeys following in ovo vaccination with an attenuated vaccine.

Clinical bottom line. Prediction of motor and functional outcomes in infants born preterm assessed at term.

Commentary on "Motor development of infants with univentricular heart at the ages of 16 and 52 weeks".

A critical issue in the study of infant development is to identify the processes by which task-specific action emerges from spontaneous movement. Emergent leg action has been studied by providing contingent reinforcement to specific leg movements using an overhead infant-activated mobile, however, there is limited information on the strategies used by infants to support the emergence of task-specific leg action from spontaneous movement. The purpose of this study is to (1) determine the ability of 3 month old infants to learn, through discovery, the contingency between leg action and mobile activation using a virtual threshold, and (2) identify strategies, defined by variance of the end-effectors (feet) and hip-knee joint coordination, used by infants that learned the contingency. Fourteen 3 month old infants participated in 2 sessions of mobile reinforcement on consecutive days. As a group, infants increased the percentage of mobile activation to meet performance criteria on Day 2, but did not meet memory or learning criteria across days. However, five infants learned the contingency based on individual learning criteria. When interacting with the mobile on Day 2 as compared to spontaneous kicking on Day 1, infants who learned the contingency, but not infants who did not learn the contingency, increased variance of the end-effectors (feet) in the vertical, task-specific direction and demonstrated less in-phase hip-knee joint coordination. An important discovery is that infants can discover this very specific contingency, suggesting that this movement behavior (action) can be shaped in future work. This may have implications for the rehabilitation of infants with atypical leg action.

Article	Year
Immunity to avian pneumovirus infection in turkeys following in ovo vaccination with an attenuated vaccine. Vaccine\| PubMed ID: 12615430	2003
Clinical bottom line. Prediction of motor and functional outcomes in infants born preterm assessed at term. Pediatric physical therapy : the official publication of the Section on Pediatrics of the American Physical Therapy Association\| PubMed ID: 19214071	2009
Commentary on "Motor development of infants with univentricular heart at the ages of 16 and 52 weeks". Pediatric physical therapy : the official publication of the Section on Pediatrics of the American Physical Therapy Association\| PubMed ID: 23995668	2013
Infant exploratory learning: influence on leg joint coordination. PloS one\| PubMed ID: 24626202	2014
Commentary on "measuring advanced motor skills in children with cerebral palsy: further development of the challenge module". Pediatric physical therapy : the official publication of the Section on Pediatrics of the American Physical Therapy Association\| PubMed ID: 24675121	2014
Commentary on "The effect of torsional shoe flexibility on gait and stability in children learning to walk". Pediatric physical therapy : the official publication of the Section on Pediatrics of the American Physical Therapy Association\| PubMed ID: 25251797	2014
Commentary on "Short-term intensive neurodevelopmental treatment program experiences of parents and their children with disabilities". Pediatric physical therapy : the official publication of the Section on Pediatrics of the American Physical Therapy Association\| PubMed ID: 25521267	2015

Barbara Sargent

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