Neurocognitive Development of Children Living in Poverty

描述（由申请人提供）：这一多学科的建议集中在抑制和执行控制功能的学龄前到早期学龄儿童生活在不同程度的经济劣势和优势的组成部分认知能力的发展轨迹。虽然许多研究表明，经济贫困和儿童认知发育受损之间的关联，没有研究探讨经济和环境的不利影响的执行控制功能内的组件神经认知能力。我们提出，贫困对认知发展的影响的一种机制可能是通过延迟或受损的执行控制功能（例如，工作记忆、抑制），并且更具体地通过抑制性执行控制功能的损伤。为了探索这一假设，我们将5个学科-行为神经科学，神经心理学，流行病学，儿童发展和经济学-代表了几个积极合作的实验室的专业知识，在研究儿童的执行控制功能和将这些研究应用于高危人群方面具有相当丰富的集体经验。该研究样本利用了一个独特的，有时间限制的机会来随访2个经过充分研究的出生队列的儿童，他们来自大纽黑文地区，很快将年满4岁和5岁。我们建议从3个收入-需求水平来描述男孩和女孩抑制性执行控制功能中的认知能力成分（贫困线以下、处于贫困线和贫困线以上）和3个族裔群体（非裔美国人，西班牙裔美国人和欧洲裔美国人）（2 × 3 × 3设计，共招募了360名2岁（4岁和5岁）的儿童，并纵向随访至8岁。通过生长曲线模型，我们将研究这些组成功能是如何在4至8年的发展过程中建立起来的，以及这些轨迹是否在贫困和环境不利的儿童和那些没有。我们还将研究父母的行为，父母的信仰和态度，父母的心理健康和家庭环境可能缓和经济劣势和可能对神经认知发展的有害影响之间的关系。执行控制功能内的抑制过程的研究是特别相关的经济上处于不利地位的人群中，一些发育迟缓和/或发育障碍，涉及失调抑制的研究据说是更常见的。有一个更详细的了解的发展轨迹的儿童从低收入样本的抑制性执行控制的基本评估，可以告知机制问题，贫困如何影响一般的认知能力。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This multidisicplinary proposal focuses on the developmental trajectories of component cognitive abilities within inhibition and executive control functions in preschool to early school aged children living in varying levels of economic disadvantage and advantage. While many studies have shown an association between economic deprivation and impaired cognitive development in childhood, no studies have explored the impact of economic and environmental disadvantage on component neurocognitive capacities within executive control functions. We propose that 1 mechanism for the impact of poverty on cognitive development may be through delays or impaired executive control functions (e.g., working memory, inhibition) and more specifically through an impairment in inhibitory executive control functions. To explore this hypothesis, we bring 5 disciplines together--behavioral neuroscience, neuropsychology, epidemiology, child development, and economics--that represent the expertise of several actively collaborating laboratories with considerable collective experience in studying executive control functions in children and in the application of such studies to high-risk populations. The study sample takes advantage of a unique, time-limited opportunity to follow-up 2 well studied birth cohorts of children, who are from the greater New Haven area and will soon be 4 and 5 years old. We propose to characterize component cognitive abilities within inhibitory executive control functions in boys and girls from 3 income-to-need levels (below poverty, at poverty, and above poverty line) and 3 ethnicity groups (African-American, Hispanic- American and European-American) (a 2 X 3 X 3 design with 360 children total recruited at 2 ages (4 and 5 years) and followed longitudinally through age 8 years. Through growth curve modeling, we will study how these component functions are built up over the course of development from 4 to 8 years, and whether or not these trajectories vary between children growing up in poverty and environmental disadvantage and those not. We will also study how parental behavior, parental beliefs and attitudes, parental mental health, and home environment might moderate relations between economic disadvantage and possible deleterious effects on neurocognitive development. Studying inhibitory processes within executive control functions is particularly pertinent to studies of economically disadvantaged populations in whom a number of developmental delays and/or developmental disorders involving dysregulated inhibition are said to be more common. Having a more detailed understanding of the developmental trajectories of children from low-income samples on basic assessments of inhibitory executive control may inform mechanism questions about how poverty impacts general cognitive capacities.