Neural and behavioral coordination in infant-caregiver communication across the socioeconomic spectrum

该奖项是美国国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）计划的一部分。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在普林斯顿大学Casey lewis - williams博士的赞助下，该博士后奖学金奖支持一位早期职业科学家调查婴儿早期学习环境质量变化的神经机制，在全社会经济地位（SES）中，影响婴儿的语言学习。婴儿的大部分学习都是通过与他人的社会互动进行的，这些早期社会互动的质量对语言和认知的发展至关重要。特别是，在整个社会经济地位范围内，输入质量存在很大差异，这往往使来自社会经济地位较低家庭的婴儿面临学习挑战的风险。然而，目前关于输入如何影响学习的研究主要集中在语言上，削弱了目前对婴儿日常交流环境的全部复杂性的理解。此外，关于输入质量影响学习的神经机制的研究很少。本项目将解决这两个限制，探索在整个SES谱中输入质量的变化、照顾者-婴儿互动期间的神经活动和六个月后的语言结果之间的关系。这个项目采用一种新颖的方法来研究婴儿如何在与照顾者的社会互动中学习。目的1侧重于研究“婴儿导向沟通”（IDC）在SES频谱中的变化。IDC包括一套广泛的相互关联的信号，这些信号有助于婴儿的日常学习环境：语言、动作、手势、情感和触摸。目的2使用双脑功能近红外光谱（fNIRS）研究IDC质量与护理者和婴儿在交流互动过程中大脑神经活动的相关程度之间的关系。最后，目的3探讨IDC和神经耦合如何独立和共同预测婴儿词汇增长。总之，这些目标将为跨社会经济地位的婴儿在与照顾者的互动中学习的机制提供新的见解，最终目标是为旨在加强学习的干预措施产生新的想法。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。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Casey Lew-Williams at Princeton University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the neural mechanisms by which variation in the quality of infants early learning environment, across the full spectrum of socioeconomic status (SES), impacts infants’ language learning. Much of infants’ learning occurs through social interactions with others, and the quality of these early social interactions is consequential for linguistic and cognitive development. In particular, there is substantial variation in input quality across the SES spectrum, often putting infants from lower-SES families at risk for learning challenges. However, current investigations of how input impacts learning have had a dominant focus on language, undercutting current understanding of the full complexity of infants’ everyday communicative environments. Further, minimal research has studied the neural mechanisms through which input quality influences learning. This project will address both of these limitations, exploring relations between variation in input quality across the full SES spectrum, neural activity during caregiver-infant interactions, and language outcomes six months later.This project takes a novel approach to studying how infants learn in social interactions with caregivers. Objective 1 focuses on examining variation in “infant-directed communication” (IDC) across the SES spectrum. IDC includes a broad suite of interconnected signals that contribute to infants’ everyday learning environment: language, action, gesture, emotion, and touch. Objective 2 uses dual-brain functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate relations between quality of IDC and the extent to which neural activity in caregivers’ and infants’ brains are correlated during communicative interactions. Finally, Objective 3 asks how IDC and neural coupling independently and jointly predict infants’ vocabulary growth. Together, these objectives will provide new insight into the mechanisms by which infants across the SES spectrum learn in interactions with their caregivers, with the ultimate goal of generating new ideas for interventions that aim to enhance learning.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.