The development of number processing and attention in infancy

 描述（由申请人提供）：数量处理的发展已经研究了几十年，至少从皮亚杰关于儿童对数字和数量的推理的开创性研究开始。从20世纪80年代进行的经典研究开始，人们对婴儿期这种推理的起源产生了浓厚的兴趣。这些研究中有许多是出于理解婴儿所拥有的核心数字系统的愿望，并记录婴儿处理有关数量的信息的早熟能力。现在是聚焦的时候了，这样我们就可以理解这些能力在婴儿期的发展。现有的文献提供了混合的结果，很少有明确的答案，为什么调查结果是混合的。显然 婴儿对数字和数量很敏感。不太清楚的是这种敏感性是如何发展的，以及婴儿如何专注于某些维度，如确切的数字，而忽略其他维度，如总面积。 了解这一发展很重要，原因有几个。在这个世界上，有效的运作取决于定量推理。即使是婴儿也需要对数量敏感，以决定如何行动，跟踪物体，并准确地代表周围的世界。此外，科学和技术的进步需要较强的数量能力，婴儿期和幼儿期的数量能力可能与儿童期后期的数量能力有关。最后，数字处理在一些发育障碍中受损，如威廉综合征和脆性X综合征。要完全理解这种障碍，以及发展干预措施来帮助儿童科普障碍，需要完全理解典型的发展。 虽然婴儿的视觉数字处理已经研究了几十年，但对这种能力如何发展的了解仍然很少。研究询问婴儿是否注意数字或其他显示特征，以及什么条件鼓励婴儿注意数字。这些重要的研究记录了婴儿的能力，但对这些过程如何发展的理解有限。对成年人的研究表明，对小数字的处理与其他视觉注意和感知过程密切相关。因此，婴儿对小集合的加工可能也与这些视觉认知能力有关。这个项目询问如何通过将数字处理与视觉处理的其他方面联系起来来理解数字处理的发展。 本研究的目的是揭示婴儿对数字和总面积的注意力的发展（实验1）。这是一个重要的问题，因为它将提供了解婴儿如何平衡他们的注意力，以多种视觉特征。了解婴儿如何以这种方式平衡和控制他们的注意力一直是其他领域研究的主题。因此，拟议的项目将与这些其他领域建立更密切的联系。此外，本研究还将探讨数字加工的个体差异与其他认知能力的个体差异之间的关系（实验2）。数字处理不是孤立发生的。我们在感知物品、关注它们、形成对它们的记忆的同时，决定了有多少物品存在。此外，这些其他过程中的一些对于视觉数字处理可能是重要的（即，识别存在多少项目取决于将项目感知为单独的项目）。因此，一个完整的理解数字处理需要检查数字处理是如何与其他视觉认知过程。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The development of quantitative processing has been studied for decades, at least from the time of seminal studies by Piaget on children's reasoning about number and quantity. Beginning with now-classic studies conducted in the 1980s, there has been significant interest in the origins of such reasoning in infancy. Many of these studies are motivated by a desire to understand the core number systems that infants have, and to document infants' precocious abilities to process information about quantity. It is time for a shif in focus, so we can understand the development of these abilities in infancy. The existing literature provides mixed results and few clear answers for why the findings are mixed. It is clear that infants are sensitive to number and quantity. What is less clear is how this sensitivity develops, and how infants focus on some dimensions, such as exact number, and ignore other dimensions, such as total area. Understanding this development is important for several reasons. Effective functioning in the world depends on quantitative reasoning. Even infants need to be sensitive to quantity to make decisions about how to act, track objects, and accurately represent the world around them. In addition, advances in science and technology require strong quantitative abilities, and numerical abilities in infancy and early childhood may be related to quantitative abilities later in childhood. Finally, numerical processing is impaired n a number of developmental disorders, such as William's Syndrome and Fragile X syndrome. A complete understanding of such disorders-and the development of interventions to help children cope with impairments-requires a complete understanding of typical development. Although infants' visual number processing has been studied for decades, there remains little understanding into how this ability develops. Studies have asked whether or not infants attend to number or other features of displays, and what conditions encourage infants' attention to number. These important studies document infants' ability, but have yielded limited understanding into how these processes develop. Research with adults has revealed that processing of small sets of numbers is closely related to other visual attentional and perceptual processes. Thus, it is possible that infants' processing of small sets is also related to those visual cognitive abilities. This project asks how the development of number processing can be understood by relating this processing to other aspects of visual processing. This project will aim to uncover the development of infants' attention to number versus total area (Experiment 1). This is an important question because it will provide understanding into how infants' balance their attention to multiple visual features. Understanding how infants' balance and control their attention in this way has been the topic of research in other domains. The proposed project, therefore, will allow closer ties to those other domains. In addition, this project will examine ho individual differences in number processing are related to individual differences in other cognitive abilities (Experiment 2). Number processing does not happen in isolation. We determine how many items are present while perceiving the items, attending to them, forming memories of them. In addition, some of these other processes may be important for visual number processing (i.e., recognizing how many items are present depends on perceiving the items as individual items). Thus, a complete understanding of number processing requires examining how number processing is related to other visual cognitive processes.