Selective Attention and Intersensory Processing in Infancy

婴儿如何理解他们周围的世界？这个项目研究了婴儿的注意力最初被吸引到感觉间冗余的可能性，这种冗余发生在通过多个感觉系统感知相同信息时。感觉间冗余的一个例子是面部运动和说话人的声音所共有的信息。将采用多种测量方法来确定：(1)婴儿是否在注意其他类型的信息之前注意到由感觉间冗余提供的信息，(2)感觉间冗余是否有助于婴儿更有效地处理信息，以及(3)婴儿参与感觉间加工的大脑区域。回答这些问题将有助于深入了解婴儿是如何向照顾者学习的。该项目将通过培养认知神经科学的研究生和本科生产生更广泛的影响，这将增加未被充分代表的群体在STEM领域的参与。研究结果也有助于理解残疾儿童处理视听语言的经验缺陷。该项目有三个主要目标，将在5个月和10个月大的婴儿身上进行一系列实验。目的1研究感觉间冗余如何影响婴儿的注意力和从视听语言中学习，同时使用与注意力和记忆相关的心率变化测量和脑电图（EEG）测量。目的2通过在脑电图测试前的初始学习过程中提供特定类型的信息，检验婴儿的注意力是否会偏向或远离感觉间冗余。目的3是利用脑电图数据的计算建模，确定哪些大脑区域参与了婴儿时期视听语言的感觉间处理。婴儿对由视听语言提供的冗余信息表现出增强的大脑活动，并且预计前额叶皮层区域参与处理婴儿的感觉冗余。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。

How do infants make sense of the world around them? This project examines the possibility that infant attention is initially drawn to the intersensory redundancy that occurs when the same information is perceived through more than one sensory system. An example of intersensory redundancy is the information common to the movements of the face and sounds of the voice of a person speaking. Multiple measures will be used to determine: (1) whether infants pay attention to information provided by intersensory redundancy before paying attention to other types of information, (2) whether intersensory redundancy helps infants process information more efficiently, and (3) areas of the brain involved in intersensory processing in infancy. Answering these questions will provide insight into how infants learn from caregivers. This project will have broader impacts through training graduate and undergraduate students in cognitive neuroscience, which will increase the participation of underrepresented groups in STEM fields. Findings may also contribute to understanding deficits children with disabilities experience processing audiovisual speech. This project has three major aims that will be addressed in a series of experiments on 5- and 10-month-old infants. Aim 1 examines how intersensory redundancy affects infants’ attention and learning from audiovisual speech, using simultaneous measures of heart rate changes associated with attention and electroencephalogram (EEG) measures of attention and memory. Aim 2 examines whether infants’ attention can be biased toward or away from intersensory redundancy by providing specific types of information during initial learning prior to EEG testing. Aim 3 is to determine which areas of the brain are involved in intersensory processing of audiovisual speech in infancy, using computational modeling of EEG data. Infants are expected to show enhanced brain activity to redundant information provided by audiovisual speech, and areas of prefrontal cortex are expected to be involved in processing intersensory redundancy in infancy.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.