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

了解婴儿期的认知发展：注意力和视觉短期m

• 批准号: 8218041
• 负责人: LISA M OAKES
• 金额: $ 30.15万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-12-01 至 2016-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8218041
• 关键词: Adult; Age-Months; Architecture; Attention; Behavioral; Binding; Blinking; Brain region; Child; Cognitive; Complex; Cues; Detection; Development; Disease; Event; Eye; Eye Movements; Facial Expression; Felis catus; Foundations; Fragile X Syndrome; Furniture; Future; Image; Individual; Individual Differences; Infant; Knowledge; Lead; Learning; Measures; Methods; Nature; Neurodevelopmental Disorder; Outcome; Parietal; Persons; Population; Process; Research; Risk; Role; Schizophrenia; Services; Short-Term Memory; Side; Social Interaction; Stimulus; Structure; Testing; Time; Visual; Visual attention; Williams Syndrome; Work; autism spectrum disorder; cognitive system; directed attention; distraction; infancy; memory encoding; postnatal; relating to nervous system; research study; scaffold; skills; vision development; visual process; visual processing; visual search

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.

描述（由申请人提供）：最近的工作已经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中戏剧性的快速发育变化。然而，在现实世界的认知任务中，VSTM并不是孤立地使用的，它被用来计划眼球运动，注意的信息被编码在VSTM中，存储在VSTM中的信息与当前可用的信息进行比较。虽然这种相互作用在成年人中已经很好地建立起来，但目前我们对婴儿期的这种相互作用知之甚少。此外，在认知发展领域，人们越来越认识到，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，他们可能会创造练习的机会，支架，并创造使用其他新兴技能的机会，既提高婴儿对新兴技能的使用，又促进该技能的进一步发展。因此，我们理解VSTM早期发展的一个重要步骤是研究VSTM是如何使用的，以及如何与其他认知技能和能力共同发展。注意力和VSTM之间的关系特别重要，原因有几个。首先，VSTM和注意力之间强大的双向关系在成年人中已经被发现。在成年人中，注意到的信息被编码在VSTM中，VSTM中编码的信息可以引导注意力进行视觉搜索，规划眼球运动，并在记忆和现在可见的场景之间进行比较。第二，VSTM在6 ~ 8个月之间经历了快速而戏剧性的发展变化，而这恰恰是其他研究显示注意力控制发生巨大变化的时候。因此，这两种认知技能的发展沿着相似的时间尺度。第三，注意力和视觉短时记忆是由相同的底层大脑区域控制的。因此，随着这些区域的发展，我们可以预期这两种能力的发展变化。最后，注意力策略可以帮助婴儿克服他们在每个时刻遇到的大量信息，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容量的个体差异有关。而且，对婴儿的研究表明，他们可以使用一个突出的线索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丰富的基础上，以前的工作检查VSTM和注意力隔离。重点将放在6到10个月之间的过渡，这段时间VSTM和注意力过程都发生了快速而显著的变化。为了研究VSTM的内容如何控制注意力，该项目将使用眼动追踪方法来研究VSTM在眼动和视觉搜索中的作用（实验1和2）。为了研究注意线索如何影响VSTM编码，本项目将使用优先注视和眼动追踪方法来研究婴儿在杂乱视觉场景中的变化检测-在这种情况下，多个项目的阵列（实验3和4）。最后，为了检验这些能力的共同发展，本项目将纵向评估VSTM和注意能力（实验5）。总之，这些实验将大大增加我们对这种批判性认知能力的典型发展的理解。 公共卫生关系：视觉短时记忆（VSTM）中的信息存储对于许多认知任务至关重要，包括进行和校正眼动，搜索视觉场景中的重要目标，以及比较两个不能同时被注视的视觉图像。如果没有视觉扫描隧道显微镜，就不可能确定眨眼前后的世界视图是相同的，眼球运动是否落在了预期的目标上，或者从沙发一侧出现的物体是否与前一刻消失在沙发后面的物体相同。因此，这种能力对于认知发展至关重要，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依赖于顶叶皮层区域。这是一个脆弱的区域，已经发现在发育障碍如自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）、威廉姆斯综合征（WS）和脆性X综合征（FXS）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的实质性缺陷，这是一种在更长的时间尺度上展开的神经发育障碍。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阶段的儿童提供另一种途径。因此，从这个项目中获得的知识，将提供关键的理解，核心的典型发展的许多方面的基本认知能力，并可能提供一个途径，为未来识别儿童的非典型发展的风险。因此，这个项目将增加我们确保所有儿童健康发展的能力。