Brain, Behavior and Emergence of Cognitive Competence

描述(由申请人提供)：本计划-项目申请描述了由NICHD-38051支持的关于认知能力出现的持续研究。它建立在心理学原理和从该研究中阐明的关键问题的基础上，利用在那里开发和证明的方法。本申请在几个重要的新方向上扩展了这项研究，同时也解决了我们之前的发现产生的问题。提出了七个项目，研究旨在阐明认知能力的出现，因为它在灵长类物种和发育中明显存在，并与大脑结构、活动和功能相对应。目前的申请受益于项目之间的实质性互补和融合，因此整个计划的科学承诺远远超过每个强大的单个项目预期的科学成果的总和。被研究的心理过程(注意力、执行功能、学习、记忆、空间问题解决、数字认知、分类、运动控制)本身是密切相关的，理解任何一个过程都需要研究它与其他结构的关系，以及每个过程是如何被语言的可用性改变的。这些项目的综合、对这组调查人员的行政支持、非人类灵长类动物的护理、实验室资源的维护和神经成像扫描将使这一计划-项目中的所有研究受益，因此被提议作为核心成本。这确保了这一雄心勃勃的研究计划将以高效和综合的方式进行，利用我们独特而有限的动物资源来产生最大的科学成果。我们预计，这些应用的发现将产生教育和临床应用，以及从广泛的比较、发展和神经心理学角度提供关于学习、语言和认知的理论。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This program-project application describes continuation of research on the emergence of cognitive competence supported by NICHD-38051. It builds on the psychological principles and key questions articulated from that research, utilizing methods developed and proven there. The present application extends this research in several important new directions while also addressing questions that were generated by our previous findings. Seven projects are proposed, with research designed to elucidate the emergence of cognitive competence as it is manifest across primate species and development, and in correspondence with brain structure, activity and function. The present application benefits from substantial complementary and convergence between the projects, so that the scientific promise of the entire program greatly exceeds the sum of the anticipated scientific gains of each strong individual project. The psychological processes being investigated (attention, executive function, learning, memory, spatial problem solving, numerical cognition, categorization, motor control) are themselves closely inter-related, and the understanding of any one process dictates studying its relation to the other constructs as well as how each process is altered by the availability of language. The synthesis of these projects, administrative support for this team of investigators, care of the nonhuman primates, maintenance of laboratory resources, and neuroimaging scans will benefit all of the investigations in this program-project, and thus are proposed as core costs. This ensures that the ambitious program of research will be conducted in an efficient and integrative way, using our unique and limited animal resources to yield the greatest scientific gains. We anticipate that the findings from these applications will generate educational and clinical applications, as well as informing theory on learning, language, and cognition from a broad comparative, developmental, and neuropsychological perspective.