Neural and behavioral coordination in infant-caregiver communication across the socioeconomic spectrum

该奖项是NSF社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）计划的一部分。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界，工业或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF的奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。NSF致力于促进来自科学界各部门的科学家，包括来自代表性不足的群体的科学家参与其研究计划和活动;博士后期间被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的重要水平。每个博士后研究员必须解决推进各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在普林斯顿大学凯西·卢-威廉姆斯博士的赞助下，该博士后奖学金支持一位早期职业科学家调查婴儿早期学习环境质量变化的神经机制，在社会经济地位（SES）的全方位影响婴儿的语言学习。大部分婴儿的学习是通过与他人的社会互动进行的，这些早期社会互动的质量对语言和认知的发展至关重要。特别是，在整个社会经济地位谱的输入质量有很大的差异，往往把婴儿从低社会经济地位的家庭在学习挑战的风险。然而，目前关于输入如何影响学习的研究主要集中在语言上，削弱了目前对婴儿日常交际环境复杂性的理解。此外，很少有研究通过输入质量影响学习的神经机制。这个项目将解决这两个局限性，探索在整个SES谱输入质量的变化，在婴儿与婴儿互动的神经活动，和语言的结果之间的关系六个月后，这个项目采取了一种新的方法来研究婴儿如何学习在社会互动与照顾者。目标1的重点是检查在“婴儿导向的通信”（IDC）在整个SES频谱的变化。IDC包括一套广泛的相互关联的信号，有助于婴儿的日常学习环境：语言，动作，手势，情感和触摸。目的2利用双脑功能近红外光谱（fNIRS）技术研究在交流互动过程中，看护者和婴儿的脑神经活动的相关程度与IDC质量的关系。最后，目标3询问IDC和神经耦合如何独立和联合预测婴儿的词汇量增长。总之，这些目标将提供新的洞察力的机制，婴儿在社会经济地位谱学习与他们的照顾者的互动，最终目标是产生新的想法，干预措施，旨在提高学习。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准的支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Casey Lew-Williams at Princeton University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the neural mechanisms by which variation in the quality of infants early learning environment, across the full spectrum of socioeconomic status (SES), impacts infants’ language learning. Much of infants’ learning occurs through social interactions with others, and the quality of these early social interactions is consequential for linguistic and cognitive development. In particular, there is substantial variation in input quality across the SES spectrum, often putting infants from lower-SES families at risk for learning challenges. However, current investigations of how input impacts learning have had a dominant focus on language, undercutting current understanding of the full complexity of infants’ everyday communicative environments. Further, minimal research has studied the neural mechanisms through which input quality influences learning. This project will address both of these limitations, exploring relations between variation in input quality across the full SES spectrum, neural activity during caregiver-infant interactions, and language outcomes six months later.This project takes a novel approach to studying how infants learn in social interactions with caregivers. Objective 1 focuses on examining variation in “infant-directed communication” (IDC) across the SES spectrum. IDC includes a broad suite of interconnected signals that contribute to infants’ everyday learning environment: language, action, gesture, emotion, and touch. Objective 2 uses dual-brain functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate relations between quality of IDC and the extent to which neural activity in caregivers’ and infants’ brains are correlated during communicative interactions. Finally, Objective 3 asks how IDC and neural coupling independently and jointly predict infants’ vocabulary growth. Together, these objectives will provide new insight into the mechanisms by which infants across the SES spectrum learn in interactions with their caregivers, with the ultimate goal of generating new ideas for interventions that aim to enhance learning.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.