The Development of Selective Attention in Infancy as Measured by Eye Movements

描述（由申请人提供）：对于所有年龄段的人来说，一个至关重要的问题是如何有选择地过滤环境中过多的信息，以允许连贯的信息处理。这个问题的答案对认知的发展、效率和行为表现都至关重要。为了回答这个问题，我们依赖于选择性注意的概念，它被描述为大脑从众多可能的对象中选择一个而忽略其他对象的过程。选择性注意机制很重要，因为处理资源有限，使得处理视觉世界中的大量信息变得困难。对于不断受到大量新信息冲击的婴儿来说，他们的处理资源比成年人效率更低，也更有限，有选择地参与的能力似乎对于构建有组织和详细的世界表征至关重要。某些发育障碍，如注意力缺陷障碍和自闭症，其特征是缺乏选择性分配注意力的能力，这一事实支持了这一观点。因此，研究建议通过系统地研究眼动反应时间测量来解决我们对选择性注意机制发展的理解差距，该测量更适合于评估选择机制，更类似于成人选择性注意机制的典型测量方式。此外，通过测量眼球运动，婴儿和成人可以在同一范式下进行测试，收集相同的定性数据，从而更直接地比较婴儿和成人的选择性注意机制及其发育特征。在成人中，许多不同的注意选择机制已经被研究，特别是，前注意与注意机制，从其他潜在目标中选择目标的机制，以及抑制非选择信息加工（即忽略）的机制。这些机制在发展研究中都没有得到太多或任何关注。因此，本研究将重点关注这三种选择性注意机制，并预计婴儿对这三种选择性注意机制表现的实质与成人没有什么不同，但婴儿对这三种选择性注意机制的加工相对于成人要慢一些。这项拟议中的研究有可能首次回答一些长期存在的问题，即婴儿理解世界的能力的本质。在未来，这项拟议中的研究还将使人们更好地理解，当婴儿和儿童在理解他们的世界方面遇到困难时，发育过程中出现了什么问题。了解这些机制对于掌握大脑发育和潜在的发育障碍（如注意力缺陷障碍和自闭症）至关重要。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A question of fundamental importance for all ages is how the overabundance of information in the environment is selectively filtered to allow for coherent information processing. The answer is central to the development of cognition, its efficiency and its behavioral manifestation. To answer this, we rely on the construct of selective attention, described as the process in which the mind takes hold of one out of a multitude of possible objects while ignoring the others. Selective attention mechanisms are important because processing resources are limited making processing the immense amount of information in the visual world all at once difficult. For the infant, who is constantly assailed by a multitude of new information and whose processing resources are less efficient and more limited than adults, being capable of selectively attending would seem to be crucial to constructing an organized and detailed representation of their world. This is supported by the fact that certain developmental disabilities, such as Attention Deficit Disorder and Autism, are characterized by deficits in the ability to selectively allocate attention. Research is therefore proposed to begin to address the gaps in our understanding of the development of selective attention mechanisms by systematically investigating with an eye movement reaction time measure that is more appropriate for evaluating the selection mechanisms and more similar to the manner in which adults' selective attention mechanisms are typically measured. Moreover, by measuring eye movements, both infants and adults can be tested in the same paradigm with the collection of the same qualitative data, enabling a more direct comparison between the selective attention mechanisms of infants and adults and their developmental characteristics. In adults, a number of different mechanisms of attentional selectivity have been investigated, in particular, preattentive versus attentive mechanisms, mechanisms for selecting a target from among other potential targets, and mechanisms of inhibiting processing (i.e. ignoring) of non-selected information. None of these mechanisms have received much or any focus in developmental research. The proposed research will therefore focus on the three selective attention mechanisms and it is expected that the substance of infants' manifestation of these mechanisms will not be different than adults but that the infants' processing will be slowed relative to adults. The proposed research has the potential to, for the first time, answer some long-standing questions about the nature of infants' ability to make sense of their worlds. In the future, the proposed research will also enable a better understanding of what goes wrong in development when infants and children have trouble making sense of their worlds. Understanding these mechanisms is critical to getting a handle on brain development and potential developmental disabilities such as Attention Deficit Disorder and Autism. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: A question of fundamental importance for cognitive development is how infants, with limited cognitive resources, are able to selectively filter the overabundance of information in their environment to allow for coherent learning about their world. The particular objective of this research proposal, therefore, is to begin to delineate the mechanisms of selective attention in early development by use of a new methodology of assessing infants' eye movements. The proposed research also has the potential to enable a better understanding of what goes wrong in attentional development when infants and children have trouble selectively filtering the information in their worlds, such as in Attention Deficit Disorder and Autism.