Characterizing pet experience in infancy & the relation to cognitive development

描述（由申请人提供）：人类与动物的互动已经被研究了几十年，研究了这种互动的质量及其对心理功能（如自尊和人们如何处理悲伤）的影响。这项研究已经延伸到儿童时期，表明在成年人身上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，关于婴儿与动物的关系和互动，以及这些经历如何促进发展，我们知之甚少。例如，父母如何鼓励或阻止婴儿与伴侣动物互动，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，就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历塑造的——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，经验的差异会对健康发展产生深远的影响。与在其他条件下长大的儿童相比，在机构中、贫困中或没有细心照顾的照顾者长大的儿童有不同的发展结果。孩子之间的一个共同区别是家里有宠物。研究婴儿对宠物体验的变化，以及这些变化如何影响他们对动物认知的发展，为系统研究环境对婴儿发展的影响提供了一个模型，也为婴儿对伴侣动物体验的质量和数量提供了急需的信息。虽然婴儿对动物刺激的感知和学习已经被研究了几十年，但很少有人试图将这种学习与他们在家庭中与宠物的经历联系起来

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.