Neurocognitive Development of Children Living in Poverty

描述(由申请人提供)：这项多学科的建议集中在学龄前儿童中抑制和执行控制功能的成分认知能力的发展轨迹，这些儿童生活在不同程度的经济劣势和优势中。虽然许多研究表明经济匮乏与儿童认知发展受损之间存在关联，但还没有研究探讨经济和环境劣势对执行控制功能中的组成部分神经认知能力的影响。我们认为1贫困对认知发展的影响机制可能是通过延迟或损害执行控制功能(如工作记忆、抑制)，更具体地说是通过抑制执行控制功能的损害。为了探索这一假设，我们将5个学科--行为神经科学、神经心理学、流行病学、儿童发展和经济学--聚集在一起，代表了几个积极合作的实验室的专业知识，这些实验室在研究儿童的执行控制功能和将此类研究应用于高危人群方面具有相当丰富的集体经验。研究样本利用一个独特的、有时间限制的机会对两个经过充分研究的出生队列儿童进行了跟踪调查，这些儿童来自大纽黑文地区，很快就会分别为4岁和5岁。我们建议从3个收入-需要水平(低于贫困、处于贫困和高于贫困线)和3个种族(非洲裔美国人、西班牙裔美国人和欧洲裔美国人)(2×3×3设计，总共招募了360名2岁(4岁和5岁)儿童，纵向追踪到8岁)来表征男孩和女孩在抑制性执行控制功能中的成分认知能力。通过生长曲线建模，我们将研究这些成分函数是如何在4至8岁的发展过程中建立起来的，以及这些轨迹在贫困和环境不利的儿童之间是否存在差异。我们还将研究父母的行为、父母的信念和态度、父母的心理健康和家庭环境如何调节经济劣势和对神经认知发展可能产生的有害影响之间的关系。研究执行控制功能中的抑制过程尤其适用于对经济困难人群的研究，在这些人群中，据说涉及失调抑制的一些发育迟缓和/或发育障碍更为常见。从低收入样本中更详细地了解儿童对抑制性执行控制的基本评估的发展轨迹，可能会为关于贫困如何影响一般认知能力的机制问题提供信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This multidisicplinary proposal focuses on the developmental trajectories of component cognitive abilities within inhibition and executive control functions in preschool to early school aged children living in varying levels of economic disadvantage and advantage. While many studies have shown an association between economic deprivation and impaired cognitive development in childhood, no studies have explored the impact of economic and environmental disadvantage on component neurocognitive capacities within executive control functions. We propose that 1 mechanism for the impact of poverty on cognitive development may be through delays or impaired executive control functions (e.g., working memory, inhibition) and more specifically through an impairment in inhibitory executive control functions. To explore this hypothesis, we bring 5 disciplines together--behavioral neuroscience, neuropsychology, epidemiology, child development, and economics--that represent the expertise of several actively collaborating laboratories with considerable collective experience in studying executive control functions in children and in the application of such studies to high-risk populations. The study sample takes advantage of a unique, time-limited opportunity to follow-up 2 well studied birth cohorts of children, who are from the greater New Haven area and will soon be 4 and 5 years old. We propose to characterize component cognitive abilities within inhibitory executive control functions in boys and girls from 3 income-to-need levels (below poverty, at poverty, and above poverty line) and 3 ethnicity groups (African-American, Hispanic- American and European-American) (a 2 X 3 X 3 design with 360 children total recruited at 2 ages (4 and 5 years) and followed longitudinally through age 8 years. Through growth curve modeling, we will study how these component functions are built up over the course of development from 4 to 8 years, and whether or not these trajectories vary between children growing up in poverty and environmental disadvantage and those not. We will also study how parental behavior, parental beliefs and attitudes, parental mental health, and home environment might moderate relations between economic disadvantage and possible deleterious effects on neurocognitive development. Studying inhibitory processes within executive control functions is particularly pertinent to studies of economically disadvantaged populations in whom a number of developmental delays and/or developmental disorders involving dysregulated inhibition are said to be more common. Having a more detailed understanding of the developmental trajectories of children from low-income samples on basic assessments of inhibitory executive control may inform mechanism questions about how poverty impacts general cognitive capacities.