Understanding cognitive development in infancy: Attention and visual short-term m

描述(由申请人提供)：最近的工作表征了婴儿期视觉短期记忆(VSTM)的各个方面，揭示了出生后第一年发生的戏剧性、快速的发展变化。然而，在现实世界的认知任务中，VSTM并不是孤立使用的--它被用来规划眼球运动，参与的信息以VSTM编码，存储在VSTM中的信息与当前可用的信息进行比较。尽管这种相互作用在成年人中已经很好地建立起来了，但目前我们对婴儿时期的这种相互作用知之甚少。此外，认知发展领域越来越多的人认识到，仅仅孤立地理解能力的发展并不能完全理解这些能力是如何发展的。随着技能和能力的发展，它们可能会创造机会来练习、搭建脚手架，并创造机会使用其他新兴技能，既增强了婴儿对新兴技能的使用，也促进了该技能的进一步发展。因此，我们理解VSTM早期发展的重要一步是考察VSTM是如何被使用并与其他认知技能和能力共同发展的。注意力和VSTM之间的关系特别重要，原因有几个。首先，在成年人中发现了VSTM和注意力之间强大的双向关系。在成年人中，被关注的信息是用VSTM编码的，用VSTM编码的信息可以在视觉搜索、计划眼球运动以及在记忆的场景和现在可见的场景之间进行比较时引导注意力。其次，VSTM在6到8个月之间经历了快速而戏剧性的发展变化，而这正是其他研究显示注意力控制发生重大变化的时候。因此，这两种认知技能沿着相似的时间尺度发展。第三，注意力和VSTM由相同的大脑底层区域提供支持。因此，随着这些区域的发展，我们预计这两种能力都会发生发展变化。最后，注意策略可以帮助婴儿克服他们每时每刻都会遇到的大量信息，促进他们在混乱的视觉场景中使用VSTM。对成年人的研究表明，注意策略的个体差异与VSTM能力的个体差异有关。而且，与婴儿一起工作表明，他们可以使用显著的提示来帮助将注意力集中在场景中的一个项目上。拟议的工作将建立在以前单独审查VSTM和关注的丰富基础上。重点将放在6到10个月之间的过渡期，在这段时间里，VSTM和注意力过程都会经历快速而重大的变化。为了研究VSTM的内容如何控制注意力，本项目将使用眼球跟踪方法来研究VSTM在眼动和视觉搜索中的作用(实验1和实验2)。为了检验注意线索对VSTM编码的贡献，该项目将使用优先观看和眼球跟踪两种方法来检查婴儿在混乱的视觉场景中的变化检测-在这种情况下，是由多个项目组成的阵列(实验3和4)。最后，为了检验这些能力的共同发展，本项目将对VSTM和注意力能力进行纵向评估(实验5)。总而言之，这些实验将大大增加我们对这种关键认知能力的典型发展的理解。 与公共健康相关：在视觉短期记忆(VSTM)中存储信息对许多认知任务至关重要，包括进行和纠正眼动、在视觉场景中搜索重要目标，以及比较不能同时产生凹陷的两个视觉图像。如果没有VSTM，就不可能确定眨眼前后的世界是相同的，眼睛的运动是否落在了预定的目标上，或者从沙发一侧出现的物体与不久前消失在沙发后面的物体是不是相同的。因此，这种能力对许多认知发展是必不可少的，如果没有这种能力，婴儿将难以学习他们遇到的物体、人和事件。VSTM取决于顶叶皮质区域。这是一个脆弱的区域，已被发现在自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)、威廉姆斯综合征(WS)和脆性X综合征(FXS)等发育障碍中受到损害。对这些人群中的VSTM知之甚少，但我们可以预测，这些人也会有VSTM缺陷。事实上，在精神分裂症中已经发现了VSTM的严重缺陷，这是一种神经发育障碍，会在更长的时间范围内展开。因此，了解婴儿期VSTM的典型发展可能为识别处于非典型发展轨迹开始的儿童提供另一种途径。因此，从这个项目中获得的知识将提供对对典型发育的许多方面至关重要的基本认知能力的关键理解，并可能为今后确定处于非典型发育风险的儿童提供一种途径。因此，这个项目将增加我们确保所有儿童健康发展的能力。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent work has characterized aspects of visual short-term memory (VSTM) in infancy, uncovering dramatic, rapid developmental change in the first postnatal year. In real-world cognitive tasks, however, VSTM is not used in isolation-it is used to plan eye-movements, information that is attended is encoded in VSTM, and information stored in VSTM is compared with currently available information. Although such interactions are well established in adults, at present we know little about such interactions in infancy. Moreover, there is an increasing realization in the field of cognitive development that solely understanding the development of abilities in isolation does not provide a complete understanding of how such abilities develop. As skills and abilities develop, they likely create opportunities to practice, scaffold, and creating opportunities to use other emerging skills, both enhancing infants' use of the emerging skill and promoting additional development of that skill. Therefore, an important step in our understanding of the early development of VSTM is to examine how VSTM is used and co-develops with other cognitive skills and abilities. The relation between attention and VSTM is particularly important for several reasons. First, powerful and bi-directional relations between VSTM and attention have been uncovered in adults. In adults, information that is attended is encoded in VSTM, and information encoded in VSTM can direct attention in visual search, planning eye-movements, and making comparisons between remembered and now visible scenes. Second, VSTM undergoes rapid and dramatic developmental change between 6 and 8 months, precisely when other work has shown large changes in attentional control. Thus, the two cognitive skills develop along similar timescales. Third, attention and VSTM are subserved by the same underlying brain regions. Thus, as these regions develop, we would expect developmental changes in both these abilities. Finally, attentional strategies may help infants overcome the overwhelming amount of information that they encounter in each moment, facilitating their use of VSTM in cluttered visual scenes. Work with adults has shown that individual differences in attentional strategies are related to individual differences in VSTM capacity. And, work with infants suggests that they can use a salient cue to help focus attention on only one item in a scene. The proposed work will build on the rich foundation of previous work examining VSTM and attention in isolation. The focus will be on the transition between 6 and 10 months, a time when both VSTM and attentional processes undergo rapid and significant change. To examine how the contents of VSTM control attention, this project will use eye-tracking methods to investigate the role of VSTM in eye-movements and visual search (Experiments 1 and 2). To examine how attentional cueing contributes to VSTM encoding, this project will use both preferential looking and eye-tracking methods to examine infants' change detection in cluttered visual scenes-in this case, arrays of multiple items (Experiments 3 and 4). Finally, to examine the co-development of these abilities, this project will assess longitudinally VSTM and attentional abilities (Experiment 5). Together, these experiments will add considerably to our understanding of the typical development of this critical cognitive ability. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Storing information in visual short-term memory (VSTM) is crucial for many cognitive tasks including making and correcting eye-movements, searching a visual scene for an important target, and comparing two visual images that cannot be simultaneously foveated. Without VSTM it would be impossible to determine that the view of the world is the same before and after an eyeblink, that an eye-movement had landed on the intended target, or that the object that appears from one side of a couch is the same as the object that disappeared behind the couch a moment before. This ability therefore is essential for much of cognitive development and without it infants would have difficulty learning about the objects, people, and events they encounter. VSTM depends on parietal cortical regions. This is a vulnerable region that has been found to be compromised in development disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Williams Syndrome (WS), and Fragile X syndrome (FXS). Little is known about VSTM in such populations, but we may predict that such individuals also would have deficits in VSTM. Indeed, substantial deficits in VSTM have been revealed in schizophrenia, a neurodevelopmental disorder that unfolds over a much longer time scale. Understanding the typical development of VSTM in infancy, therefore, may provide another avenue for identifying children who are at the beginning of atypical developmental trajectories. The knowledge gained from this project, therefore, will provide key understanding to a fundamental cognitive ability central to many aspects of typical development, and may provide an avenue for future identification of children at risk for atypical development. Therefore, this project will add to our ability to insure the healthy development of all children.