Intersensory Processing, Developmental Trajectories, and Longitudinal Outcomes

描述(由申请人提供)：注意力、社交和沟通功能障碍已经成为一个重要的公共卫生问题，但我们缺乏一个系统的数据库来描述支持最佳发育结果的基本构件的典型发展。注意力是通向我们所有感知、学习和记忆的大门，然而，在发展科学中，它仍然是一个研究严重不足的话题。典型地，发育中的婴儿表现出对面孔、声音和婴儿定向言语的高度关注，这对于支撑认知、社交和语言的发展至关重要。相比之下，儿童 与非社交事件相比，自闭症患者表现出社交定向障碍，其特点是对这些刺激的注意力减少，社交和交流功能严重缺陷。这些能力关键依赖于早期注意力和感觉间处理技能，即跨感官整合信息的能力，特别是在动态的面孔、语音和社交活动中。然而，目前还没有婴幼儿感觉间加工的个体差异测量方法，以及感觉间加工技能影响注意力和后来的社交、认知和语言发展的途径仍然很少，这给识别婴儿时期出现的非典型发展模式带来了严重的障碍。本提案满足了这些需求。我们已经开发出了前两种注意力和感觉间加工的个体差异测量方法，可以用于婴幼儿。它们评估动态、视听社交和非社交事件的注意定向、脱离、维持以及感觉间处理的速度和准确性。本提案将提供第一批纵向数据集，揭示在3至42个月的典型发育中这些基本的注意力和感觉间加工的发展轨迹(目标1和2)。这将为确定非典型发展轨迹提供关键基础。使用结构方程方法进行生长曲线建模，然后我们将测试这些测量的发展轨迹与18、30和42个月的认知、社交和语言结果之间的关联模型(目标3)。这将阐明最可行的影响模式，通过这些模式，感觉间加工和注意技能影响社会、认知和语言结果，有助于发展理论、知识和指导干预。最后，我们开发和测试了训练感觉间加工技能的程序，并在迁移测试中评估了它的有效性(目标4)。改善和培育它的条件将为开发感觉间干预奠定基础。这些目标与健康有很高的相关性。它们将揭示婴儿注意力和感觉间加工技能的典型发展及其对儿童结果的影响，提供第一个系统的基础研究机构，旨在相关并易于转化为确定早期非典型的注意和感觉间加工轨迹和指导干预措施。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Disorders of attention, social, and communicative functioning have become a significant public health concern yet we lack a systematic data base characterizing the typical development of basic building blocks that support optimal developmental outcomes. Attention is the gateway to all we perceive, learn, and remember, however, it remains a significantly understudied topic in developmental science. Typically developing infants show heightened attention to faces, voices, and infant directed speech and this is critical for scaffolding cognitive, social, and language development. In contrast, children with autism show social orienting impairments marked by decreased attention to these stimuli as compared with nonsocial events, and serious deficits in social and communicative functioning. These capabilities depend critically on early attention and intersensory processing skills, the ability to integrate information across the senses, particularly in dynamic faces, voics and social events. However, there currently are no individual difference measures of intersensory processing for infants or young children and the pathways by which intersensory processing skills affect attention and later social, cognitive, and language development remain poorly understood, presenting serious obstacles to identifying the emergence of atypical developmental patterns in infancy. The present proposal addresses these needs. We have developed the first two individual difference measures of attention and intersensory processing that can be used with infants and young children. They assess attention orienting, disengaging, maintenance and speed and accuracy of intersensory processing for dynamic, audiovisual social and nonsocial events. The present proposal will provide the first longitudinal data sets revealing developmental trajectories for these basic building blocks of attention and intersensory processing in typical development across 3 to 42 mos of age (Aims 1 and 2). This will provide a critical basis for identifying atypical developmental trajectories. Using a structural equation approach to growth curve modeling, we will then test models of association between developmental trajectories for these measures with cognitive, social, and language outcomes at 18, 30, and 42 mos (Aim 3). This will elucidate the most viable models of influence through which intersensory processing and attention skills affect social, cognitive, and language outcomes, contributing to developmental theory, knowledge, and guiding interventions. Finally, we develop and test a procedure for training intersensory processing skills and assess its effectiveness in a transfer test (Aim 4). Improvement and the conditions that foster it will lay a foundation for developing intersensory interventions. These goals have high health relevance. They will reveal the typical development of infant attention and intersensory processing skills and their effects on child outcomes, providing the first systematic body of basic research designed to be relevant and easily translated to identifying early atypical trajectories of attentin and intersensory processing and guiding interventions.