Biological and Behavioral Predictors of Early School Success

描述（由申请人提供）：儿童在学年早期的成功或失败是一系列发展结果的重要预测因素。尽管我们知道这些预测关系的存在，但我们对低成就与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。该提案描述了一项新颖的纵向生物行为研究，对 350 名 4 岁至一年级儿童的不同样本进行研究，采用多种方法来研究情绪和认知过程的轨迹以及向学校过渡时学术技能和社交技能能力的出现。我们建议研究学龄前和幼儿期的学习参与度，将其作为调节儿童早期情感、认知和社交技能以及后来的学校成功的机制（通过一年级的学业成绩和社交技能轨迹来衡量）。此外，我们建议研究家庭和学校中调节这些早期技能和学习参与度之间关系的背景因素。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，这些学习参与指数作为早期情感和认知技能的函数而出现并整合起来，使得该研究项目具有独特的定位，可以阐明迄今为止尚未探索或与先前的重要发展技能没有很好联系的学校相关过程。通过了解学习投入的出现、它如何受到儿童和环境因素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来提高学业成绩并支持儿童的适应。

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.