Executive Functioning and Pretense in Development

拟议研究的主要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。学龄前阶段 EF 技能的获得与许多社交（例如情绪调节、良心和社交能力）和认知（例如智力、注意力、记忆力和阅读理解）能力相关。此外，EF 缺陷越来越多地与自闭症和注意力缺陷多动障碍相关。因此，确定低 EF 是否介导幼儿的社交和认知功能非常重要。正在调查的具体主张是，EF 技能（例如由前额皮质变化介导的抑制性自我控制）与儿童发育中的表征能力密切相关。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、解决问题和推理信念等心理状态所需的技能（即“心理理论”）。该提案的探究焦点是儿童表达能力的最早、最明显（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为什么年幼的孩子似乎对现实世界有很多了解，但却可以进行大量的假装。抑制控制是 EF 的一个关键组成部分，被认为是这些理论的共同点。此外，过去的研究直接或间接表明儿童的自我控制（例如等待能力）与假装/幻想之间存在正相关关系。最近收集的幼儿和学龄前儿童的初步数据支持了这些发现。因此，本研究旨在更彻底地研究儿童 EF 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：首先，在一项相关研究中，调查成熟的抑制控制措施是否与 3 岁儿童在各种假装措施中的表现有关，而不受年龄、性别、语言能力和工作记忆能力的影响；其次，在一项研究中，测量了通过实验操纵其中一个结构对另一个结构产生系统影响的程度。具体来说，将使用假装环境（象征性地表示奖励）来尝试增强儿童的自我控制力。

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.