Executive Functioning and Pretense in Development

发展中的执行职能和假装

• 批准号: 6419703
• 负责人: STEPHANIE M. CARLSON
• 金额: $ 7.17万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-06-01 至 2004-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6419703
• 关键词: behavioral /social science research tag; child behavior; child psychology; clinical research; cognition; developmental neurobiology; developmental psychology; human subject; imagination; impulsive behavior; judgment; play; prefrontal lobe /cortex; preschool child (1-5); psychological tests; social behavior

The broad focus of the proposed research is children's executive functioning (EF) and its relation to social-cognitive development. EFs include self-regulation, planning, response inhibition, and resistance to interference. The acquisition of EF skills in the preschool period is associated with a host of social (e.g. emotion regulation, conscience, and social competence) and cognitive (e.g., intelligence, attention, memory, and reading comprehension) abilities. In addition, deficits in EF increasingly have been linked to the disorders of autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Hence, it is of considerable importance to determine whether and low EF mediates young children's social and cognitive functioning. The specific claim under investigation is that EF skills such as inhibitory self-control, mediated by prefrontal cortex changes, are critically related to children's representational abilities in development. Evidence suggests that EF may contribute to both the emergence and expression of mental representational skills, such as those required for problem, solving and reasoning about mental states like beliefs (i.e., "theory of mind"). The locus of inquiry in this proposal is one of the earliest and most observable (yet understudied) manifestations of children's capacity for a representation: pretense. A number of cognitive theories exist to explain how it is that young children, who would seem to have much to learn about the real world, can engage in an extensive amount of pretense. Inhibitory control, a critical component of EF is proposed as a common denominator in these theories. In addition, past research studies have directly or indirectly indicated a positive relation between self- control (e.g., waiting ability) and pretense/fantasy in children. Recent preliminary data collected with toddler and preschool children support these findings. The proposed research therefore aims to examine more thoroughly the relation between individual differences in children's EF and pretend play skills. This aim will be achieved in two ways: first, in a correlational study investigating whether well-established measures of inhibitory control are related to performance on a variety of pretense measures in 3-year olds, independent of effects due to age, sex, verbal ability, and working memory capacity; and second, in a study measuring the extent to which experimentally manipulating one of these constructs has systematic effects on the other. Specifically, a pretense context (symbolically represented rewards) will be used in an attempt to enhance children's self control.

建议研究的广泛重点是儿童的执行功能（EF）及其与社会认知发展的关系。EF包括自我调节，计划，反应抑制和抗干扰。学前阶段EF技能的获得与许多社会（例如情绪调节，良心和社会能力）和认知（例如，智力、注意力、记忆力和阅读理解）能力。此外，EF的缺陷越来越多地与自闭症和注意缺陷多动障碍有关。因此，确定低EF是否介导幼儿的社会和认知功能是相当重要的。正在调查的具体要求是，EF技能，如抑制性自我控制，介导的前额叶皮层的变化，是至关重要的儿童的代表性能力的发展。有证据表明，EF可能有助于心理表征技能的出现和表达，例如问题，解决和推理心理状态所需的技能，如信念（即，“心理理论”）。在这个提议中，探究的焦点是儿童表征能力的最早和最可观察到的（但尚未得到充分研究）表现之一：假装。有许多认知理论可以解释，看起来对真实的世界还有很多东西要学的幼儿，是如何进行大量的假装的。抑制性控制是EF的一个重要组成部分，被认为是这些理论的共同点。此外，过去的研究直接或间接地表明，自我控制（例如，等待能力）和假装/幻想。最近收集的幼儿和学龄前儿童的初步数据支持这些发现。因此，拟议的研究旨在更彻底地研究儿童的EF和假装游戏技能的个体差异之间的关系。这一目标将通过两种方式实现：第一，在一项相关性研究中，调查3岁奥尔兹中，成熟的抑制控制措施是否与各种伪装措施的表现有关，而不受年龄、性别、言语能力和工作记忆容量的影响;第二，在一项研究中，测量实验性地操纵这些结构之一对另一个结构产生系统性影响的程度。具体来说，一个假装的背景下（象征性地表示奖励）将被用来试图提高儿童的自我控制。