SPEED OF INFORMATION PROCESSING IN INFANCY

建议的项目旨在丰富我们对婴儿期信息处理速度的性质和发展的理解，并探讨其与工作记忆的关系。这项工作将提供信息处理速度的早期发展的新的理解，婴儿认知的核心结构之一，可能是婴儿期和儿童后期认知连续性的基础之一。主要目标是：（1）确定注意力、情感和抑制能力与视觉信息加工速度的相关程度;（2）检验视觉信息加工速度与图形和特征信息编码的关系;（3）描述视觉信息加工速度在生命第一年的发展轨迹;（4）以相似的方式描述同一时期工作记忆的发展轨迹;（5）考察视觉信息加工速度与工作记忆的关系，以及年龄相关的速度变化在多大程度上解释了年龄相关的记忆变化。这些问题将在生命的第一年进行检查，视觉处理的两个不同的和概念上重要的领域：面孔和物体。目标1和2将涉及三个年龄（5，7和9个月）的面孔和物体的平行研究，其中处理速度将通过一项新任务进行评估，即持续熟悉。这项任务涉及重复呈现一个熟悉的刺激，每次都与一个新的刺激配对;速度以显示对小说的一致偏好所花费的时间为索引。注意力和情感将同时进行评估，婴儿抑制注视和转移视线的倾向也将同时进行评估。将对目标3 - 5进行横向和纵向研究。3-13个月大的婴儿将接受连续熟悉任务和测量工作记忆的跨度任务的测试。将比较横截面和纵向样本以及跨域（面部和物体）的发育曲线。

The proposed project is designed to enrich our understanding of the nature and development of speed of information processing in infancy and to explore its relation to working memory. This work will provide new understanding of the early development of speed of information processing, one of the core constructs of infant cognition and possibly one of the foundations of continuity between cognition in infancy and later childhood. The principal aims are: (1) to determine the extent to which attention, affect, and inhibitory ability are related to speed of visual information processing; (2) to examine the relation of speed of visual information processing to the encoding of configural and featural information; (3) to characterize the developmental trajectory of speed of visual information processing over the course of the first year of life; (4) to similarly characterize the developmental trajectory of working memory over the same period; and (5) to examine the relation of speed of visual information processing to working memory, and the extent to which age-related changes in speed account for age-related changes in memory. These issues will be examined in the first year of life for two distinct and conceptually important domains of visual processing: faces and objects. Aims 1 and 2 will involve parallel studies for faces and objects at each of three ages (5, 7, & 9 months) in which speed of processing will be assessed with a new task, continuous familiarization. This task involves repeated presentations of a familiar stimulus, each time paired with a novel one; speed is indexed by the time taken to show a consistent preference for the novel. Attention and affect will be assessed concurrently, as will the infant's propensity to inhibit looking and shift gaze. Aims 3 - 5 will be investigated both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Infants aged 3-13 months will be tested with the continuous familiarization task and a span task measuring working memory. Developmental curves will be compared for cross-sectional and longitudinal samples and across domains (faces and objects).