Intersensory Perception of Social Events: Typical and Atypical Development

描述（由申请人提供）：本 KO2 提案的目的是为我提供时间和资源，用于职业发展和研究活动的结合，旨在增强我在早期感知和注意力领域推进发展科学的能力。我的首要目标是使婴儿和儿童发展的基础研究更容易转化为应用，例如自闭症等疾病的非典型发展以及家庭或学校等自然学习环境。我制定了一项计划，将我关于注意力和互感知觉典型发展的知识、培训和基础研究与自闭症非典型注意力和互感知觉的新知识、培训和研究交织在一起，从而为每个项目带来显着的交叉和增值。这种协同效应将通过开展职业发展活动来实现，例如定向阅读、参加会议和研究实验室、创建协作研究网络、学习先进的统计方法、撰写理论和概念论文、培训和指导下一代科学家，以及直接将三个先验设计的研究方向相互交织来实现。这些研究方向集中于关注社会事件的各个方面（认知、知觉、情感和交流发展的主要基础）如何以及在什么条件下变得突出、参与和感知，以及这些方面在发展过程中如何变化。拟议的计划弥合了对婴儿和儿童、单模态和多模态感知、社会和非社会事件感知以及典型和非典型发展的研究之间的差距。 第一个研究方向（我目前资助的 RO1）评估婴幼儿社会事件的感觉间知觉的典型发展，重点是感觉间冗余在指导和组织注意力和知觉发展中的作用。它结合了婴儿控制的习惯、反应时间、视觉偏好和眼球追踪测量。第二个研究方向（由自闭症之声资助）评估自闭症儿童对社交和非社交事件的注意力和相互感知、典型发育和发育迟缓。我们开发了一种新的协议，在一次测试中评估注意力的四个基本组成部分（脱离、定向、维持、感觉间处理），以清楚地表征自闭症的注意力技能和损伤。患有自闭症的儿童表现出社交定向障碍，对面孔、他人和言语的注意力减少。然而，我们对社会事件关注感知的典型本质、基础和发展过程却知之甚少。因此，在第三个（新的）研究方向中，我建议提供第一个关于婴儿期和幼儿期对面孔、声音和视听言语的注意力典型发展的系统数据库。这些研究将弥合典型和非典型发育知识之间的关键差距，并通过使用跨年龄（从 2 个月到 36 个月）的通用方法、措施和刺激，在我当前的两个研究项目之间建立直接联系。这将提供典型发展的全面发展图景，作为发展科学的理论基础，并为评估婴儿期和幼儿期的非典型发展提供发展背景和基线。 如果 KO2 提案获得资助，这将使我有时间追求新提出的研究方向和职业发展活动，旨在将我正在进行的典型发展研究计划与非典型发展研究计划结合起来。在接下来的几年里，鉴于独特而幸运的环境，我有能力实现这一目标，因为我拥有针对典型发展的 RO1 资助以及针对自闭症的小额赠款，并为每个项目配备了训练有素的研究团队，以及与高技能和才华横溢的合作者团队合作。 KO2 奖项提供的额外时间将使通过研究、培训、奖学金、合作和指导将这种整合提升到一个新的水平。 公共卫生相关性：这项研究将揭示有关婴儿和儿童对社会和非社会事件的关注的性质、基础和发展的新信息。研究结果将提供大量关于自闭症幼儿的非典型注意力以及2至36个月大的注意力的典型发展的重要信息，其详细程度对于早期识别非典型发展模式（包括自闭症特征的社会注意力缺陷）来说是新颖且必要的。研究结果旨在轻松转化为现实世界环境，并可以作为发育迟缓干预措施的基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of this KO2 proposal is to provide me with time and resources for a combination of career development and research activities designed to enhance my ability to advance developmental science in the area of early perception and attention. My overarching aim is to make basic research in infant and child development more easily translated to applications such as atypical development in disorders such as autism and to natural learning contexts such as home or school. I have created a plan for interweaving my knowledge, training, and basic research on the typical development of attention and intersensory perception with new knowledge, training, and research on atypical attention and intersensory perception in autism, in a way that will result in significant cross-fertilization and value added for each program. This synergistic effect will be accomplished by pursuing career development activities such as directed readings, traveling to conferences and research labs, creating a collaborative research network, learning advanced statistical methods, writing theory and concept papers, and training and mentoring the next generation of scientists, as well as by directly interweaving three research directions designed a priori to inform one another. These research directions converge to focus on how and under what conditions various aspects of social events (a primary basis for cognitive, perceptual, emotional, and communicative development) become salient, attended, and perceived and how this changes across development. The proposed program bridges gaps between research conducted on infants and children, unimodal and multimodal perception, social and nonsocial event perception, and typical and atypical development. The first research direction (my currently funded RO1) assesses the typical development of intersensory perception of social events in infants and young children with a focus on the role of intersensory redundancy in guiding and organizing the development of attention and perception. It uses a combination of infant controlled habituation, reaction time, visual preference, and eye tracking measures. A second research direction (funded by Autism Speaks) assesses attention and intersensory perception of social and nonsocial events in children with autism, typical development, and developmental delay. We have developed a new protocol assessing four basic building blocks of attention (disengagement, orienting, maintenance, intersensory processing) in a single test to clearly characterize attention skills and impairments in autism. Children with autism show a social orienting impairment, with reduced attention to faces, people, and speech. However, we know little about the typical nature, basis and developmental course of attention and perception of social events. In a third (new) research direction, I thus propose to provide the first systematic data base on the typical development of attention to faces, voices, and audiovisual speech, across infancy and early childhood. These studies will bridge critical gaps between knowledge of typical and atypical development and forge direct links between my two current research programs by using common methods, measures, and stimuli across age, from 2- to 36- months. This will provide a comprehensive developmental picture of typical development, serving as a basis for theory in developmental science and providing a developmental context and baseline for evaluating atypical development across infancy and early childhood. If the KO2 proposal is funded, this would allow me the time to pursue the newly proposed research direction and the career development activities designed to integrate my ongoing research program on typical development with that of atypical development. During the next few years, I am uniquely poised to accomplish this goal given the unique and fortunate circumstances of having a funded RO1 on typical development along with a small grant on autism, and trained research teams in place for each program, as well as access to a highly skilled and talented group of collaborators. The additional time afforded by the KO2 award would make it possible to take this integration to the next level through research, training, scholarship, collaboration and mentoring. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This research will reveal new information about the nature, basis and development of attention to social and nonsocial events in infants and children. Findings will provide a wealth of critical information about atypical attention in young children with autism and about the typical development of attention between 2- and 36-months of age, at a level of detail that is novel and necessary for the early identification of atypical patterns of development, including social attention deficits characteristic of autism. Findings are designed to be easily translated to real world settings and can serve as a basis for interventions for developmental delays.