Conference on Mechanisms of Cognitive Development: Behavioral and Neural Perspectives, Pittsburgh, PA, October 1998

这笔赠款将支持一次会议，将来自不同背景的研究人员聚集在一起，研究儿童思维在发展过程中是如何演变的，特别关注经验在导致变化中的作用。这是一个基本的主题，既与儿童学习的过程有关，也与使儿童准备并能够从经验中学习的过程有关。对这些问题的行为和神经方法都将被考虑。行为学方法将包括对认知变化的“微发生”的研究-即在解决算术问题等特定任务情况下，考虑在相对较短的时间段(例如，几个小时的会话)内发生发展的研究。对较长时间尺度(几个月和几年)的认知变化的研究也将被考虑，使用计算建模和动力系统方法来研究思维能力发生变化的过程的研究也将被考虑。神经方法将包括研究神经元反应和神经元之间的联系随着经验的反应而变化的方式，特别是当这些变化在儿童和成人获得新思维技能的实际过程中表现出来的时候。其他神经方法包括通过各种大脑结构的逐渐成熟来研究认知能力出现的可能基础，以及研究经验对大脑不同区域的组织和内部表征的影响。会议还将把自闭症和注意力缺陷障碍等发育异常作为正常功能的窗口。研讨会将研究以下问题：1)为什么认知能力在发展过程中会出现？2)发展差异和个体差异以及学习中发展异常的根源是什么？3)当人们学习时，大脑发生了什么？4)如何对经验进行排序和计时，以优化学习？这些问题的答案对我们如何教育儿童和弥补阻碍思维能力发展的缺陷具有重要意义。这些影响将在与会者之间的讨论中得出。研讨会的会议记录将作为卡内基研讨会系列的一卷出版。

This grant will support a conference to bring together researchers from a variety of backgrounds to consider how children's thinking evolves during development, with a particular focus on the role of experience in causing change. This is a fundamental topic related both to the processes by which children learn and those that make children ready and able to learn from experience. Both behavioral and neural approaches to these issues will be considered. The behavioral approaches will include research on the 'microgenesis' of cognitive change---that is, research that considers development as it occurs over relatively short periods of time (e.g., several hour-long sessions) in specific task situations such as solving arithmetic problems. Research on cognitive change over longer time scales (months and years) will also be considered, as will research that uses computational modeling and dynamical systems approaches to processes by which change in thinking ability occur. Neural approaches will include the study of the way in which neuronal responses, and the connections among neurons, change in response to experience, particularly as these changes are expressed during the actual process of acquiring new thinking skills in children and adults. Other neural approaches include studies of the possible basis of the emergence of cognitive abilities through the progressive maturation of various brain structures, and studies of the effects of experience on the organization of and internal representations in various brain regions. The conference will also consider developmental anomalies such as autism and attention deficit disorder as windows on normal function. The following questions will be examined in the course of the workshop: 1) Why do cognitive abilities emerge when they do during development? 2) What are the sources of developmental and individual differences, and of developmental anomalies in learning? 3) What happens in the brain when people learn? 4) How can experiences be ordered and timed so as to optimize learning? The answers to these questions have strong implications for how we educate children and remediate deficits that impede development of thinking abilities. These implications will be drawn out in discussions among the participants. The proceedings of the symposium will be published as a volume in the Carnegie Symposium series.