Motion perception and biological motion processing in adults born with extremely low birth weight

Individuals born with extremely low birth weight (ELBW, ≤ 1000 g) are at increased risk for long-term visual perceptual difficulties. Biological motion processing enables processing of animate and socially relevant movement. Studies of children born very preterm have found deficits in biological motion processing, but this has not previously been studied in adults born with ELBW. We compared biological and scrambled motion processing between ELBW and full-term controls and related motion processing with early neurodevelopmental level. Thirty-eight adults born ELBW and 29 controls from a regional longitudinal cohort completed eye-tracking tasks assessing biological and scrambled motion detection and biological motion interpretation accuracy. Stimuli were presented with varying levels of visual noise to manipulate task difficulty. The ELBW group showed slower biological motion and scrambled motion detection overall. Lower biological motion interpretation accuracy was observed in the ELBW group in the low noise condition, although no significant group × noise interaction was found. Exploratory unadjusted analyses suggested that poorer early neurodevelopmental outcome in toddlerhood may be associated with poorer biological motion processing in adulthood, although these associations did not remain significant after for multiple-comparisons adjustment. These findings suggest that adults born ELBW show less efficient motion perception than controls in adulthood.