Executive Functioning and Pretense in Development

这项拟议研究的主要焦点是儿童的执行功能(EF)及其与社会认知发展的关系。EFS包括自我调节、计划、反应抑制和抵抗干扰。在学龄前阶段获得EF技能与许多社会能力(如情绪调节、良知和社交能力)和认知能力(如智力、注意力、记忆和阅读理解)有关。此外，EF缺陷越来越多地与自闭症和注意力缺陷多动障碍的障碍有关。因此，确定低EF是否对幼儿的社会和认知功能起中介作用具有重要意义。调查中的具体主张是，通过前额叶皮质变化调节的EF技能，如抑制性自我控制，与儿童发展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，例如解决问题、解决问题和对信念等心理状态进行推理所需的技能(即“心理理论”)。这一建议中的探究中心是儿童表征能力的最早和最明显(但尚未被研究)的表现之一：伪装。有许多认知理论可以解释，看起来似乎有很多关于现实世界的知识需要学习的幼儿，为什么会进行大量的伪装。在这些理论中，抑制控制被认为是EF的一个重要组成部分。此外，过去的研究已经直接或间接地表明，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。最近收集的关于幼儿和学龄前儿童的初步数据支持这些发现。因此，这项拟议的研究旨在更彻底地考察儿童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，调查成熟的抑制控制措施是否与3岁儿童在各种伪装措施上的表现有关，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，测量实验操作其中一个结构对另一个结构的系统性影响的程度。具体地说，伪装的背景(象征性地表示奖励)将被用来试图加强儿童的自我控制。

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.