Development of Selective Attention to Multisensory Information in Human Infants

研究发现，当婴儿能同时看到和听到日常生活中的物体和事件时，他们的感知、学习和记忆能力要比只能看到或听到它们时更好。这个项目测试了这样一个假设，即造成这种情况的原因是因为冗余（即匹配）多感官信息比不匹配的多感官信息或不匹配的多感官信息更能引起人们的注意。这个项目的结果将为婴儿的感知、注意力、学习和记忆提供关键的见解，因此，他们将提出更好的方法来帮助婴儿获得关键的认知和社交技能。此外，这些结果将为一些发育障碍（如自闭症）的根本原因提供新的见解，这些障碍已知涉及对多感官信息的感知和注意力受损。最后，该项目的结果将为设计工具提供科学基础，这些工具将允许临床医生更有效地检测和改善发育障碍幼儿对多感官信息的注意力受损，从而改善他们的认知和社会发展。在大约6个月大的时候，一个以前基本的、类似反射的选择性注意反应系统转变为一个内源性驱动的选择性注意系统。这种新功能允许婴儿将他们的注意力部署到他们特别感兴趣的多感官冗余来源上。该项目试图回答三个主要问题。首先，婴儿对多感觉冗余来源的选择性注意的发育变化背后的机制是什么？第二，早期经验如何促进婴儿期多感觉冗余选择性注意的发展变化？第三，提高对多感觉冗余的选择性注意如何有助于跨不同心理领域的信息处理？研究人员将对生活在单语和双语家庭的婴儿进行眼动追踪测试，以评估他们对说话面部固有的多感官冗余的关注。在某些情况下，眼动追踪将与感官间匹配程序一起使用，以检查婴儿对言语的听觉和视觉属性的匹配。在其他情况下，眼动追踪将与习惯化/测试程序一起使用，以调查多感官事件的学习。研究者将分析注意力的时间分布以及反应的潜伏期。该项目的研究结果将为婴儿注意力和学习的出现提供新的见解，为正常发育的婴儿最大限度地集中注意力和学习提供线索，并为改善有发育障碍风险的婴儿的注意力和学习提供线索。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Studies have found that infants perceive, learn, and remember better when they can simultaneously see and hear the objects and events in their everyday life as opposed to when they can only see or hear them. This project tests the hypothesis that the reason for this is because redundant (i.e., matching) multisensory information elicits greater attention than does either mis-matching multisensory information or unisensory information. The results from this project will provide key insights into infant perception, attention, learning, and memory and, as a result, they will suggest better ways for helping infants acquire critical cognitive and social skills. In addition, the results will provide new insights into the root causes of some developmental disabilities (e.g., autism) which are known to involve impaired perception and attention to multisensory information. Finally, the results from this project will provide a scientific foundation for the design of tools that will permit clinicians to more effectively detect and ameliorate impaired attention to multisensory information in young children with developmental disabilities, thereby improving their cognitive and social development.By around 6 months of age, a previously rudimentary, reflex-like selective attention response system becomes transformed into an endogenously driven selective attention system. This new functionality permits infants to deploy their attention to sources of multisensory redundancy that are of specific interest to them. The project seeks to answer three main questions. First, what mechanisms underlie developmental changes in infant selective attention to sources of multisensory redundancy? Second, how does early experience contribute to developmental changes in selective attention to multisensory redundancy in infancy? Third, how does improving selective attention to multisensory redundancy contribute to information processing across different psychological domains? Infants residing in monolingual and bilingual households will be tested with eye tracking methods to assess attention to multisensory redundancy inherent in talking faces. In some cases, eye tracking will be used with an intersensory matching procedure to examine infant matching of auditory and visual attributes of speech. In other cases, eye tracking will be used with a habituation/test procedure to investigate learning of multisensory events. The investigators will analyze the temporal distribution of attention as well as the latency of responses. The findings from this project will provide novel insights into the emergence of attention and learning in infancy, clues to maximizing attention and learning in typically developing infants, and clues to improving attention and learning in infants at risk for developmental disabilities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.