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

博士后奖学金：SPRF：启用访问：母亲如何支持婴儿 — 促进婴儿的新兴运动技能 — 环境探索

• 批准号: 2313856
• 负责人: Joshua Schneider
• 金额: $ 16万
• 依托单位: Schneider, Joshua L
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-11-01 至 2025-10-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2313856&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Postdoctoral; Fellowship; SPRF; Enabling; Access

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.

该奖项是作为NSF的社会，行为和经济科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。在纽约大学的Karen Adolph和Catherine Tamis-LeMonda博士的赞助下，该博士后奖学金支持早期职业科学家调查母亲如何支持婴儿增加对环境的接触，作为他们发展姿势和运动技能的功能。婴儿的学习和发展是在物质和社会环境中进行的。事实上，所有的婴儿行为都发生在一个物理空间中，这个空间包含了要探索的物体、要与看护者互动的对象以及要去的地方。尽管研究人员普遍认为，环境的接触创造了探索和学习的机会，但我们对婴儿扩大环境接触的社会过程知之甚少，因为新的运动技能坐，站，爬，走出现了。当然，婴儿自身的发展能力支持他们独立地接触环境。然而，发展不是一个单独的行为，因为照顾者可以构建和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测试这一概念的基础过程：（1）评估照顾者对婴儿接近环境中远处物体或地方的能力的信念（即，看护者认为他们的婴儿可以做什么）和（2）表征看护者在帮助他们的婴儿获得够不着的物体或地方时的即时支持行为。这项研究将产生新的见解照顾者的信念，他们的婴儿的发展（一个重要的，但研究不足的话题）和照顾者如何支持婴儿的运动技能的探索，学习和发挥更深层次的理解。在四个目标中，使用新的方法和横断面，年龄匹配的控制设计，我们将测试母亲的信念，支持行为，反应能力和支持配置文件，使婴儿访问。为此，我们将引入两个新的心理物理任务，以精确量化照顾者对婴儿接触环境能力的信念。我们将测试婴儿的能力，以获得一个玩具放置在不同的距离，从婴儿，并描述照顾者的支持行为，婴儿试图访问的对象在每个距离。为了更好地理解照顾者支持的每时每刻的本质，我们还将研究当婴儿试图接近玩具时，支持是否对婴儿的实时行为做出反应。最后，我们将确定独特的配置文件的照顾者的实时支持行为，使婴儿进入环境。为了实现所有目标，我们将利用视频编码的力量，并与更广泛的研究社区分享所有研究材料。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。