Characterizing pet experience in infancy & the relation to cognitive development

描述(申请人提供)：几十年来，人们一直在研究人与动物的相互作用，描述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。这项研究已经延伸到儿童时期，表明与成年动物相处的许多有益影响在儿童身上也是如此。然而，关于婴儿与动物的关系和互动，以及这些经历如何有助于发育，人们知之甚少。例如，父母如何鼓励或保护婴儿不与同伴动物互动，以及与动物互动是否有助于婴儿快速发展的智力功能，目前尚不清楚。因此，要完全理解人与动物的相互作用，以及这种相互作用如何影响发育，需要描述婴儿与同伴动物的经历。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决定的--他们学习他们听到的语言，他们看的是哪种脸，以及与他们环境中的各种物体互动。此外，经验的不同会对健康发展产生深远的影响。在机构中、在贫困中或在没有照顾周到的照顾者的情况下长大的儿童，与在其他条件下长大的儿童相比，具有不同的发展结果。孩子之间的一个共同区别是家里有宠物。研究婴儿与宠物相处的经历的差异，以及这些差异如何有助于他们对动物的认知发展，为系统研究环境对婴儿发展的影响提供了一个模型，并提供了关于婴儿与同伴动物体验的质量和数量方面亟需的信息。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 回家。这些先前的研究对婴儿对动物的基本认知提供了重要的理解，揭示了在3到4个月大的婴儿已经有了辨别、记忆和分类各种动物的复杂能力。最近，婴儿在家中与宠物相处的经历被认为是这一早期发展的潜在因素。本项目将通过与父母的访谈(实验1)、父母对问卷的答复(实验2)和在家中观察(实验3)，提供详细的信息，描述婴儿与动物互动的质量和数量。将通过评估不同经历的婴儿在日常活动中如何在动物在场的情况下视觉扫描婴儿的自然场景来检验婴儿互动中的差异的影响(实验4)。这些实验的结果将增加我们对人与动物一生中相互作用的理解，并开始揭示与同伴动物的关系如何有助于婴儿的发育。 公共卫生相关性：人与动物的互动可以对儿童和成年人的心理功能产生深远的影响，但我们对幼儿与动物的互动类型，或这种互动对婴儿发育的影响知之甚少。早期经历的极端差异可能会导致发育结果的差异。因此，有宠物的婴儿--或被鼓励与同伴动物建立关系的婴儿--可能会与没有宠物的婴儿发育不同。因此，了解婴儿宠物体验的差异，以及这种差异如何有助于婴儿对动物的认知发展，对于广泛理解体验对婴儿发展的作用，以及了解与同伴动物的体验如何特别影响典型发育，是很重要的。从这个项目中获得的知识对于制定干预措施可能是重要的，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.