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

认知发展机制会议：行为和神经视角，宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡，1998 年 10 月

• 批准号: 9729061
• 负责人: James McClelland
• 金额: $ 3.18万
• 依托单位: Carnegie-Mellon University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-03-01 至 1999-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9729061&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Conference; Mechanisms; Cognitive; Development; Behavioral

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.

这笔赠款将支持一次会议，汇集来自各种背景的研究人员，考虑儿童的思维如何在发展过程中演变，特别关注经验在引起变化中的作用。 这是一个基本的主题，既涉及儿童学习的过程，也涉及使儿童准备好并能够从经验中学习的过程。 这些问题的行为和神经方法将被考虑。 行为方法将包括对认知变化的“微观发生”的研究--也就是说，研究认为发展是在相对较短的时间内发生的（例如，几个小时的会议）在特定的任务情况下，如解决算术问题。 也将考虑对较长时间尺度（数月和数年）的认知变化的研究，以及使用计算建模和动态系统方法来研究思维能力发生变化的过程。神经方法将包括研究神经元反应的方式，以及神经元之间的连接，对经验的反应变化，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时。 其他的神经学方法包括研究认知能力通过各种大脑结构的逐渐成熟而出现的可能基础，以及研究经验对不同大脑区域的组织和内部表征的影响。 会议还将考虑发育异常，如自闭症和注意力缺陷障碍，作为正常功能的窗口。 在研讨会的过程中，将探讨以下问题：1）为什么认知能力会在发展过程中出现？ 2)学习中的发展差异和个体差异以及发展异常的来源是什么？ 3)当人们学习的时候，大脑里会发生什么？ 4)如何安排经验的顺序和时间，以优化学习？ 这些问题的答案对我们如何教育孩子和弥补阻碍思维能力发展的缺陷有很大的影响。 这些影响将在与会者的讨论中提出。 专题讨论会的会议记录将作为卡内基专题讨论会丛书的一卷出版。