Executive Functioning and Pretense in Development

本研究的重点是儿童的执行功能及其与社会认知发展的关系。EFs包括自我调节、计划、反应抑制和对干扰的抵抗。幼儿时期EF技能的习得与一系列社会（如情绪调节、良心和社会能力）和认知（如智力、注意力、记忆和阅读理解）能力有关。此外，EF缺陷越来越多地与自闭症和注意缺陷多动障碍联系在一起。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。正在研究的具体主张是，EF技能，如抑制自我控制，由前额叶皮层的变化介导，与儿童的表征能力发展至关重要。有证据表明，EF可能有助于心理表征技能的出现和表达，例如那些需要解决问题，解决和推理的心理状态，如信仰（即“心理理论”）。这项提议的调查中心是儿童表现能力的最早和最可观察到的（但尚未得到充分研究的）表现之一：假装。有许多认知理论可以解释，看起来对现实世界还有很多东西要学的小孩子，为什么会有大量的伪装。抑制控制是EF的一个重要组成部分，在这些理论中被认为是一个共同点。此外，过去的研究已经直接或间接地表明儿童的自我控制（如等待能力）与假装/幻想之间存在正相关。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，本研究旨在更彻底地研究儿童EF的个体差异与假装游戏技能之间的关系。这一目标将通过两种方式实现：第一，在一项相关研究中，调查已建立的抑制控制措施是否与3岁儿童在各种假装测试中的表现有关，而不受年龄、性别、语言能力和工作记忆容量的影响；其次，在一项研究中测量了实验操纵其中一个构念对另一个构念的系统性影响程度。具体来说，假装情境（象征性的奖励）将被用来试图增强儿童的自我控制。

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.