Neural and Caregiver Contributions to the Development of Joint Attention

项目摘要/摘要 围绕一个共同的参照点与其他人协调注意力的能力，称为联合注意力， 是人类体验的基础，对人类在社会、认知和文化方面的健康发展至关重要 语言领域。现有的研究表明，联合注意力技能出现在生命的第一年 并且在不同的婴儿之间有显著的差异。然而，关于共同关注如何发展的关键问题仍然存在。 以及如何解释在婴儿期观察到的联合注意力的个体差异。具体地说，神经 共同注意在婴幼儿早期出现的潜在机制很少被探索或理解，也很少。 这项工作研究了照顾等经验因素如何支持婴儿的共同注意力。整体而言 这项申请的目的是提供关键的新见解，解释发展的机制 在婴儿期共同注意。特别是，这个项目旨在阐明神经和照顾因素 有助于提高婴儿在出生后第一年集中注意力的能力。中心假设是 婴儿联合注意能力的形成可以用以下几个方面来解释：(1)早熟、有组织、有功能 激活支持社会理解的大脑区域网络(即“社会大脑”)，以及(2) 与临时照顾者和响应性照顾者的经验直接构成了共同关注技能和影响力的基础 婴儿的大脑组织和功能。为了验证这一假设，婴儿联合注意行为，婴儿社交 大脑活动，以及自然不同水平的母亲临时、反应性照顾将被观察到 在两个时间点的婴儿和母亲的大样本中纵向研究：4-5个月大，当联合注意 能力才刚刚形成，婴儿的大脑特别容易受到社会经验的影响； 11-12个月，当联合注意技能得到更充分的发展，并在不同的婴儿之间有意义的差异。 婴儿的社会性大脑活动将通过EEG进行测量，无论是在婴儿“休息”的时候(作为 社交大脑的神经成熟/组织)以及在实时、自然、联合注意力集中的交互过程中 和照顾者在一起。这项拟议的研究具有创新性，因为它研究了发育过程。 发生在生命的第一年，并使用新的方法来评估婴儿的行为和大脑活动 在自然主义的、社会互动的环境中，共同注意力得到发展和使用。建议数 这项研究意义重大，因为它有望揭示导致脑瘫出现的神经机制。 联合注意力和偶然性、响应性照顾如何支持婴儿的联合注意力和大脑 发展。揭示这些机制将扩大对儿童健康发展和 为因发育障碍(如自闭症)或照顾方式改变而面临风险的儿童提供干预信息 影响婴儿期社会功能的环境(例如，母亲的抑郁、父母的冷漠)。

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The capacity to coordinate attention with others around a common point of reference, known as joint attention, is fundamental to human experience and critical to healthy human development in the social, cognitive, and linguistic domains. Existing research has demonstrated that joint attention skills emerge in the first year of life and vary meaningfully across infants. However, critical questions remain regarding how joint attention develops and what explains the individual variability in joint attention observed during infancy. Specifically, the neural mechanisms underlying joint attention as it emerges in early infancy are little explored or understood, and little work has examined how experiential factors such as caregiving can support infants’ joint attention. The overall objective of this application is to provide critical new insight into the mechanisms explaining the development of joint attention during infancy. In particular, this project aims to elucidate the neural and caregiving factors that contribute to infants’ ability to engage in joint attention during the first year of life. The central hypothesis is that infants’ emerging capacity for joint attention is explained by (1) early maturation, organization, and functional activation of a network of brain regions shown to support social understanding (i.e., the “social brain”), and (2) experience with contingent and responsive caregivers that directly scaffold joint attention skills and influence infants’ brain organization and function. To test this hypothesis, infant joint attention behavior, infant social brain activity, and naturally varying levels of mothers’ contingent, responsive caregiving will be observed longitudinally in a large sample of infant-mother dyads at two timepoints: age 4-5 months, when joint attention abilities are just emerging and the infant brain is particularly open to the influence of social experience; and age 11-12 months, when joint attention skills are more fully developed and vary meaningfully across infants. Infant social brain activity will be measured via EEG both when infants are ‘at rest’ (as an index of neuromaturation/organization of the social brain) and during real-time, naturalistic, joint-attentive interactions with the caregiver. The proposed research is innovative because it investigates developmental processes occurring early in the first year of life, and employs novel methods that assess infant behavior and brain activity in the naturalistic, social-interactive settings in which joint attention develops and is used. The proposed research is significant because it is expected to reveal the neural mechanisms underlying the emergence of joint attention and how contingent, responsive caregiving supports infants’ joint attention and brain development. Revealing these mechanisms will expand understanding of healthy child development and inform interventions for children at risk due to developmental disorders (e.g., autism) or altered caregiving environments (e.g., maternal depression, insensitive parenting) that influence social functioning in infancy.