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

该奖项是美国国家科学基金会社会、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、工业界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奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在博士的赞助下。纽约大学的凯伦·阿道夫和凯瑟琳·塔米斯-莱蒙达，这个博士后奖学金支持了一位早期职业科学家的研究，母亲是如何支持婴儿接触环境的，这是婴儿姿势和运动技能发展的一个功能。婴儿的学习和发展离不开物质和社会环境。事实上，婴儿的所有行为都发生在一个物理空间里，这个空间里有可以探索的物体、可以互动的照顾者和可以去的地方。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，我们对使婴儿扩大接触环境的社会过程知之甚少。当然，婴儿自身的发展能力支持他们对环境的独立接触。然而，发展不是一个单独的行为，因为照顾者可以组织和帮助他们的婴儿接触日常环境的新特征。本研究将测试这一概念背后的过程：(1)评估照顾者对其婴儿在环境中获取远处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）；(2)描述照顾者在帮助婴儿获得遥不可及的物体或地方时的即时支持行为。这项研究将对照顾者对婴儿发展的看法（一个重要但尚未得到充分研究的话题）产生新的见解，并对照顾者如何支持婴儿探索、学习和玩耍的运动技能有更深入的了解。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，我们将使用新颖的方法和横断面、年龄匹配的对照设计，测试母亲的信念、支持行为、响应性和支持档案，以使婴儿能够获得支持。为了做到这一点，我们将引入两个新的心理物理任务来精确量化照顾者对婴儿接触环境能力的看法。我们将测试婴儿接触放置在不同距离的玩具的能力，并描述婴儿在每个距离尝试接触物体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质，我们还将研究当婴儿试图接触玩具时，支持是否对婴儿的实时行为有反应。最后，我们将确定看护人实时支持行为的独特概况，使婴儿能够进入环境。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学习材料。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

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.