Biological and Behavioral Predictors of Early School Success

描述（由申请人提供）：儿童在上学早期的成功或失败是一系列发展成果的重要预测因素。尽管我们知道这些预测关系存在，但我们对低成就和高成就的轨迹是如何产生的知之甚少，特别是关于早期学术技能的发展前兆。该提案描述了一种新颖的纵向生物行为研究，对350名从4岁到一年级的儿童进行了多样化的样本，使用多方法研究情感和认知过程的轨迹，以及在向学校过渡时出现的学术技能和社交技能能力。我们建议检查整个学前和幼儿期的学习参与作为调解儿童的早期情感，认知和社会技能和后来的学校成功的机制，在一年级的学业成绩和社会技能的轨迹来衡量。此外，我们建议检查在家庭和学校的背景因素，温和的这些早期技能和学习参与之间的关系。学习投入被定义为与学校和学习相关的积极影响，对具有挑战性的学术任务的兴趣和坚持，以及对课堂活动的积极参与。我们建议，这些指标的学习参与出现，并成为集成的早期情感和认知技能的功能，使这个研究计划的独特定位，以阐明学校相关的过程，迄今为止要么未被探索或没有很好地联系到以前的发展显著的技能。通过了解学习投入的产生、儿童和环境因素对学习投入的影响以及它们之间的相互作用，我们可以制定更有效的干预方法，以提高儿童的学习成绩，支持儿童的适应。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children's success or failure in the early school years is an important predictor of a range of developmental outcomes. Despite our understanding that these predictive relations exist, we know very little about how trajectories of low versus high achievement are produced, particularly with respect to the developmental precursors of early academic skills. The proposal describes a novel longitudinal biobehavioral study of a diverse sample of 350 children from age 4 to first grade, using a multi-method approach to study trajectories of emotional and cognitive processes and the emergence of academic skills and social skills competence at the transition to school. We propose to examine learning engagement across preschool and early childhood as the mechanism mediating children's early emotional, cognitive, and social skills and later school success as measured by trajectories of academic achievement and social skills in first grade. Further, we propose to examine the contextual factors in home and school that moderate the relations between these early skills and learning engagement. Learning engagement is defined as positive affect associated with school and learning, interest and persistence in challenging academic tasks, and active participation in classroom activities. We propose that these indices of learning engagement emerge and become integrated as a function of earlier emotional and cognitive skills, making this program of research uniquely positioned to elucidate school-relevant processes that have to date been either unexplored or not well-linked to prior developmentally significant skills. By understanding the emergence of learning engagement and how it is affected by child and environmental factors as well as the interaction between them, we can develop more effective intervention approaches to increase academic achievement and support children's adjustment.