Arousal and Attention Regulation in High Risk Children

描述(由申请者提供)：本计划项目建立在从以前的基金资助中获得的知识基础上，通过扩展我们关于早期唤醒和关注的重要性的假设。它包括增加新的研究领域和风险人群的子项目，以及纵向扩展到学龄儿童。研究包括从新生儿期到婴儿期的婴儿和儿童，以及学龄前直到早期学龄儿童。这项设计是一项前瞻性的纵向研究，包括三个队列：(1)新招募的婴儿(n=330)，从出生到34个月；以及2个以前招募的婴儿队列(2)275个从34-60个月随访，(3)150个60-96个月的儿童。唤醒和注意力的充分发展似乎是正常自我调节发展的必要条件，自我调节缺陷将产生深远的影响，导致运动、沟通和语言、执行功能和认知组织方面的问题。在我们以前工作的基础上，早期唤醒和注意之间的关系被急性中枢神经系统损伤和神经毒性等危险条件以系统性和差异性的方式破坏。子宫内的慢性压力和遗传因素可能会导致类似的破坏。这些干扰如何以及何时发生，以及可塑性如何影响恢复，对早期婴儿期的发育都有影响，这取决于影响的性质、时间和持续时间。研究觉醒、注意力和自动调节，以及这些过程如何受到出生前和出生后不同风险条件的影响，是理解广泛的生物行为过程及其发展的基础，对多学科具有重要的理论和实践意义。我们提出了一个由三个子项目和一个核心单元组成的方案研究项目。这些子项目研究唤醒和注意力调节的发展，这些调节涉及：1.运动活动的调节；2.社会注意和交流；3.执行功能。这项研究得到了测试核心的支持。方案活动被整合到一个连贯和交互的框架中。通过检查各个子项目的相互关系，我们的主要目标是对典型发育儿童和有不良结局风险的儿童的唤醒和注意过程的发展机制产生更丰富和更准确的理解。这将帮助我们达到阐明高危婴儿和儿童自我调节问题的行为后遗症的长期实用目标。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This Program Project builds on knowledge gained from previous funded grants by expanding our hypotheses about the importance of early arousal and attention. It includes Subprojects that add new areas of study and risk populations, as well as extends longitudinally to school-age children. Studies include infants and children from the neonatal period through infancy, and pre-school years, up to early school-age. The design is a prospective longitudinal study of three cohorts: (1) newly recruited infants (n = 330) followed from birth to 34 months; and 2 cohorts of previously recruited infants (2) 275 followed from 34-60 months and (3) 150 children from 60 to 96 months. Adequate development of arousal and attention appears to be a necessary condition underlying normal autoregulatory development, and deficits in autoregulation will have far-reaching effects, producing problems in motor, communication and language, executive function, and cognitive organization. Based on our previous work, the relation between arousal and attention in early infancy is disrupted in systematic and differential ways by risk conditions such as acute CNS injury and neurotoxicity. Similar disruption might be expected by chronic stress in utero and genetic factors. How and when these disruptions take place, and how plasticity affects recovery, have implications for development well beyond the early infancy period, depending on the nature, timing and duration of the influence. Studying arousal, attention, and autoregulation, and how these processes are affected by different pre- and postnatal risk conditions, is fundamental to understanding a broad array of biobehavioral processes and their development, and is of major theoretical and practical importance to multiple disciplines. We propose a Project of programmatic research that is comprised of three Subprojects and one Core unit. The Subprojects study development of arousal and attention regulation related to I. Modulation of motor activity, II. Social attention and communication, and III. Executive function. The research is supported by a Testing Core. Program activities are integrated into a coherent and interactive framework. By examining the findings of individual Subprojects in relation to each other, our major goal is to generate a far richer and more accurate understanding of the mechanisms underlying the development of arousal and attention processes in both typically developing children and in those at risk for poor outcome. This will help us reach our long-term practical goal to elucidate behavioral sequelae of autoregulatory problems in high-risk infants and children.