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

描述（由申请人提供）：最近的研究研究了婴儿时期视觉短期记忆（VSTM）的特征，揭示了婴儿出生后第一年的快速发展变化。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，参与的信息被编码在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人中已经建立起来，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，他们可能会创造机会来练习、支撑和创造机会来使用其他新兴技能，既增强了婴儿对新兴技能的使用，又促进了该技能的进一步发展。因此，了解VSTM的早期发展的一个重要步骤是研究VSTM是如何被使用的，并与其他认知技能和能力共同发展。由于以下几个原因，注意力和VSTM之间的关系尤为重要。首先，在成人中发现了VSTM和注意之间强有力的双向关系。在成人中，被关注的信息被编码在VSTM中，而编码在VSTM中的信息可以引导注意力进行视觉搜索，计划眼球运动，以及在记忆和现在可见的场景之间进行比较。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，而其他研究表明，这段时间正是注意力控制发生巨大变化的时候。因此，这两种认知技能是在相似的时间尺度上发展的。第三，注意力和VSTM是由相同的大脑底层区域控制的。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能力的个体差异有关。而且，对婴儿的研究表明，他们可以使用一个显著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先前研究VSTM和注意力的工作的丰富基础上。重点将放在6到10个月之间的过渡阶段，在这段时间内，VSTM和注意力过程都经历了迅速而重大的变化。为了研究VSTM的内容如何控制注意力，本项目将使用眼动追踪方法来研究VSTM在眼球运动和视觉搜索中的作用（实验1和2）。为了研究注意线索对VSTM编码的影响，本项目将使用优先注视和眼球追踪方法来研究婴儿在杂乱的视觉场景中的变化检测——在这种情况下，是多个项目的数组（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关键认知能力的典型发展的理解。

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.