Characterizing pet experience in infancy & the relation to cognitive development

描述（由申请人提供）：人类与动物的相互作用已经研究了几十年，描述了这种相互作用的质量及其对心理功能的影响，如自尊和人们如何处理悲伤。这项工作已经延伸到儿童时期，表明与成年人观察到的与伴侣动物关系的许多有益影响也适用于儿童。然而，人们对婴儿与动物的关系和互动以及这些经验如何促进发育知之甚少。例如，父母如何鼓励或保护婴儿不与伴侣动物互动，以及与动物的互动是否有助于婴儿快速发展的心理功能，这些都是未知的。因此，要全面了解人与动物的互动，以及这种互动如何影响发育，需要描述婴儿与伴侣动物的经历。描述婴儿与动物的互动和关系也很重要，因为婴儿的发展是由他们的经验塑造的-他们学习他们听到的语言，他们看到的面孔，以及与环境中各种物体的互动。此外，经验上的差异会对健康发展产生深远影响。在机构中长大的儿童，在贫困中长大的儿童，或没有细心照顾的照顾者的儿童与在其他条件下长大的儿童有不同的发展结果。孩子们之间的一个共同点是家里有宠物。检查婴儿与宠物的经验的变化，以及这些变化如何有助于他们对动物的认知发展，为系统地研究环境对婴儿发育的影响提供了一个模型，并提供了有关婴儿与伴侣动物的经验的质量和数量的急需信息。 尽管婴儿对动物刺激的感知和学习已经研究了几十年，但很少有人试图将这种学习与他们在动物园中与宠物的经历联系起来。 回家这些先前的研究为婴儿对动物的基本感知提供了重要的理解，揭示了3至4个月的婴儿具有区分，记忆和分类各种动物的复杂能力。最近，婴儿在家中与宠物的经历被认为是这种早期发展的潜在贡献者。 本项目将通过与父母的访谈（实验1）、父母对问卷的回答（实验2）和在家中的观察（实验3），提供表征婴儿与动物互动的质量和数量的详细信息。通过评估具有不同经验的婴儿在动物存在的情况下如何视觉扫描婴儿日常活动中的自然场景来检查婴儿互动差异的影响（实验4）。这些实验的结果将增加我们对人类与动物在整个生命周期中相互作用的理解，并开始揭示与伴侣动物的关系有助于婴儿发育的方式。 公共卫生相关性：人与动物的互动会对儿童和成人的心理功能产生深远的影响，但我们对婴儿与动物的互动类型以及这种互动对婴儿发育的影响知之甚少。早期经验的极端差异会产生发育结果的差异。因此，有宠物的婴儿或被鼓励与伴侣动物建立关系的婴儿与没有宠物的婴儿的发育可能不同。因此，了解婴儿的宠物经验的变化，以及这些变化如何有助于婴儿对动物的认知发展，对于理解经验在婴儿发展中的作用以及理解与伴侣动物的经验如何影响典型发展非常重要。从这个项目中获得的知识可能对制定干预措施很重要，以帮助提供促进健康发展的关键经验。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Human-animal interactions have been studied for decades, characterizing the quality of such interactions and the effect they have on psychological functioning such as self-esteem and how people deal with grief. This work has extended to childhood, showing that many of the beneficial effects of relationships with companion animals observed with adults are also true in children. However, little is known about infants' relationships and interactions with animals, and how such experiences contribute to development. It is unknown, for example, how parents encourage or shield infants from interactions with companion animals, and whether interactions with animals contributes to infants' rapidly developing mental functioning. Therefore, a complete understanding of human-animal interactions, and how such interactions influence development, requires characterizing infants' experiences with companion animals. Characterizing infants' interactions and relationships with animals is also important because infant development is shaped by their experience-they learn the language they hear, the kind of faces they look at, and to interact with the kinds of objects in their environment. Moreover, differences in experience can have a profound effect on healthy development. Children who are raised in institutions, in poverty, or without a caring attentive caregiver have different developmental outcomes than children who are raised under other conditions. One common difference between children is the presence of pets in the home. Examining variations in infants' experience with pets, and how those variations contribute to their developing cognitions about animals, provides a model for systematically studying environmental influences on infant development as well as provides much needed information about the quality and quantity of infants' experience with companion animals. Although infants' perception of and learning about animal stimuli has been studied for decades, there has been little attempt to relate this learning to their experience with pets in the home. These previous studies have provided significant understanding into infants' basic perception of animals, revealing that by 3 to 4 months infants have sophisticated abilities to discriminate between, remember, categorize a wide variety of animals. Recently, infants' experience with pets in the home has been recognized as a potential contributor to this early development. This project will provide detailed information characterizing the quality and quantity of infants' interactions with animals through interviews with parents (Experiment 1), parental responses to questionnaires (Experiment 2), and observations in the home (Experiment 3). The effect of differences in infants' interactions will be examined by evaluating how infants with different experiences visually scan naturalistic scenes of infants in everyday activities in the presence of animals (Experiment 4). The results of these experiments will add to our understanding of human-animal interactions across the lifespan and begin to uncover the ways in which relationships with companion animals contributes to infants' development. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Human-animal interactions can have a profound effect on psychological functioning in children and adults, however we know little about the kinds of interactions young infants have with animals, or the effects of such interactions on infant development. Extreme differences in early experience can produce differences in developmental outcome. Thus, it is possible that infants who have pets-or who are encouraged to have relationships with companion animals-develop differently than infants who do not have pets. Understanding variations in infants' pet experiences, and how such variations contribute to infants' developing cognitions about animals, is therefore important for understanding the role of experience on infant development broadly, and for understanding how experience with companion animals in particular influences typical development. The knowledge gained from this project may be important for developing interventions to help provide critical experiences that will promote healthy development.