Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: Enabling Access: How Mothers Support Infants’ Emerging Motor Skills to Facilitate Infants’ Exploration of the Environment

该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济学博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项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。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。在纽约大学Karen Adolph博士和Catherine Tamis-Lemonda博士的赞助下，这一博士后奖学金奖项支持一位早期职业科学家，他们研究母亲如何支持婴儿越来越多地接触环境，这是他们不断发展的姿势和运动技能的功能。婴幼儿的学习和发展植根于物质和社会环境中。事实上，所有的婴儿行为都发生在一个物理空间中，其中包含要探索的对象、要与之互动的照顾者和要去的地方。尽管研究人员普遍认为，接触环境为探索和学习创造了机会，但随着新的运动技能--坐、站、爬、走--的出现，我们对使婴儿能够扩大环境接触的社会过程知之甚少。当然，婴儿自身的发展能力支持他们独立接触环境。然而，发展并不是一个单独的行为，因为照顾者可以构建并帮助他们的婴儿获得日常环境的新特征。这项研究将通过以下方式来测试这一概念背后的过程：(1)评估照顾者对其婴儿接触环境中遥远物体或地方的能力的信念(即，照顾者认为他们的婴儿可以做什么)和(2)表征照顾者在帮助他们的婴儿接触到触手可及的物体或地方时的时刻支持行为。这项研究将为照顾者对婴儿发展的看法(一个重要但未被研究的话题)提供新的见解，并更深入地理解照顾者如何支持婴儿的探索、学习和游戏的运动技能。该项目的总体目标是通过实验测试使婴儿能够接触环境的社会过程。在四个目标中，我们将使用新的方法和横断面、年龄匹配的对照设计，测试母亲的信念、支持行为、反应性和支持概况，以使婴儿能够获得。为此，我们将引入两项新的心理物理任务，以准确量化照顾者对婴儿接触环境能力的信念。我们将测试婴儿接触放置在婴儿不同距离的玩具的能力，并描述婴儿在每一距离试图接触玩具时照顾者的支持行为。为了更好地理解照顾者支持的即时性，我们还将检查支持是否对婴儿试图接触玩具时的实时行为做出反应。最后，我们将确定照顾者实时支持行为的独特概况，使婴儿能够接触到环境。对于所有目标，我们将利用视频编码的力量，并与更广泛的数据库研究社区共享所有研究材料。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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 Drs. Karen Adolph and Catherine Tamis-LeMonda at New York University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating how mothers support infants’ increasing access to the environment as a function of their developing postural and locomotor skills. Infant learning and development are embedded in a physical and social environment. Indeed, all infant behavior occurs in a physical space that contains objects to explore, caregivers to interact with, and places to go. And although researchers widely agree that access to the environment creates opportunities for exploration and learning, we know little about the social processes that enable infants to expand their environmental access as new motor skills—sitting, standing, crawling, walking—emerge. Of course, infants’ own developing abilities support their independent access to the environment. However, development is not a solo act, as caregivers can structure and help their infants access new features of everyday environments. This study will test the processes that underlie this concept by: (1) assessing caregivers’ beliefs about their infants’ abilities to access distant objects or places in the environment (i.e., what caregivers think their infants can do) and (2) characterizing caregivers’ moment-to-moment support behaviors as they help their infants gain access to out-of-reach objects or places. This research will yield novel insights into caregivers’ beliefs about their infants’ development (an important, but understudied topic) and a deeper understanding of how caregivers support infants’ motor skills for exploration, learning, and play.The overall goal of this project is to experimentally test the social processes that enable infants to access the environment. In four aims using novel methods and a cross-sectional, age-matched control design, we will test mothers’ beliefs, support behaviors, responsiveness, and support profiles to enable infant access. To do so, we will introduce two novel psychophysical tasks to precisely quantify caregivers’ beliefs about their infants’ ability to access the environment. We will test infants’ abilities to access a toy placed at various distances from the infant, and characterize caregiver’s support behaviors as infants attempt to access the object at each distance. To better understand the moment-to-moment nature of caregiver support, we will also examine whether support is responsive to infants’ real-time behaviors as infants attempt to access the toy. Finally, we will identify unique profiles of caregivers’ real-time support behaviors that enable infant access to the environment. For all aims, we will leverage the power of video coding and share all study materials with the broader research community on Databrary.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.