Developing Adaptive Coordination of Executive Functions

项目摘要 儿童在执行功能(EF)方面表现出戏剧性的发展，即以目标为导向的过程 支持灵活调整行为以应对不断变化的环境。例如，儿童的早期- EF的开发形式是被动的或动态的，根据需要检索与目标相关的信息 那一刻。随着发展，儿童变得越来越主动，或有计划，保持与目标相关 预期需要的信息。这种EFS及其发展与以下方面的好处有关 认知、情感和行动，以及它们的损害已被认为与包括ADHD在内的临床障碍有关， 自闭症、强迫症、精神分裂症和多发性抽动症。鉴于这一重要结果的重要性，许多 研究的重点是工作记忆等核心EFS的发展和干预措施。 然而，EFS是多样化的，而不是单一或通用的，每种都有相对的成本和收益。 积极主动的应急准备形式为准备工作带来了好处，但也带来了时间和精力方面的成本 实际上是在做一些事情。同样，目标维护可以帮助保持任务，但当目标- 需要换班。这样的权衡要求人们协调使用哪些EFS，例如，在 专注于一项任务直到完成，或者在几项任务之间切换以在每项任务上取得进展。因此， 儿童在EF上的显著提高可能依赖于他们对不同的自我定向的适应性协调 形式的EF，特别是在儿童获得独立并必须自己决定承担什么任务的时候 关于，从他们的扩展剧目中使用哪些EFS，以及何时。此外，这种自适应协调 EFS可以解释EF测量的表现和重要的生活结果之间的联系。 为了解决EF的这一关键但未被探索的方面，我们测试了自我导向、 生态系统形式的适应性协调(目标1)、影响这种协调的因素(目标2)以及 儿童随着时间的推移表现出的轨迹(目标3)，以及它们与现实世界测量的关系。我们 通过横断面和纵向研究，使用整合的行为研究来研究这些过程 生理测量，建立在我们的实验室和其他人的理论和经验工作的基础上。这些研究 测试：1)幼儿，已表现出一定的适应协调能力，但可能依赖于 更多关于试错过程的抽样，来自广泛的潜在方法，2)年龄较大的儿童， 世卫组织可以从特定任务的经验中学习，以便在其适应性协调中越来越有针对性 和3)成年人，他们对EFS的适应性协调在一开始可能更具战略性，跨越不同的 背景，反映了对最适合当前需求的EFS的选择。我们还跟踪儿童 随着他们在一个关键的过渡窗口取得进展，纵向。总之，这些研究将推动一项新的 理解日益适应的EFS在发展中的协调作用，并提供重要的 对更广泛的执行功能和功能障碍的理论和模型的限制和见解。

Project Summary Children show dramatic developments in executive functioning (EF), the goal-directed processes that support flexible adaptation of behavior in response to changing circumstances. For example, children's early- developing forms of EF are reactive, or on-the-fly, based on retrieval of goal-relevant information as needed in the moment. With development, children become increasingly proactive, or planful, maintaining goal-relevant information in anticipation of needing it. Such EFs and their development are associated with benefits to cognition, emotion, and action, and their impairment has been implicated in clinical disorders, including ADHD, autism, OCD, schizophrenia, and Tourette's syndrome. Given this significance for important outcomes, much research has focused on developments in and interventions targeting core EFs such as working memory. However, EFs are diverse rather than unitary or all-purpose, each with relative costs and benefits. Proactive forms of EF bring benefits to preparedness, but also costs in terms of time and effort required prior to actually doing something. Similarly, goal-maintenance can aid staying on task, but confers costs when goal- shifting is required. Such trade-offs require people to coordinate which EFs to engage when, for example, in focusing on one task until it is completed, or switching among several tasks to make progress on each. Thus, children's dramatic improvements in EF may rely upon their self-directed, adaptive coordination of distinct forms of EF, particularly as children gain independence and must determine on their own what tasks to take on, which EFs to engage from their expanding repertoire, and when. Moreover, this adaptive coordination of EFs could explain links between performance on EF measures and significant life outcomes. To address this critical but underexplored aspect of EF, we test developments in the self-directed, adaptive coordination of forms of EF (Aim 1), the factors influencing this coordination (Aim 2), and the trajectories that children show over time (Aim 3), and their relationship to real-world measures. We investigate these processes via cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, using behavioral studies integrated with physiological measures, building on theoretical and empirical work from our lab and others. The studies test: 1) young children, who have demonstrated some capacity for adaptive coordination of EFs, but may rely more on a trial-and-error process sampling from a broad repertoire of potential approaches, 2) older children, who may learn over experience with particular tasks to be increasingly targeted in their adaptive coordination of EFs, and 3) adults, whose adaptive coordination of EFs may be more strategic at the outset across different contexts, reflecting the selection of EFs that are best suited to current demands. We also track children longitudinally as they progress through a key transition window. Together, these studies will advance a new understanding of the role of increasingly adaptive coordination of EFs in development, and provide important constraints and insights for theories and models of executive function and dysfunction more broadly.