SPEED OF INFORMATION PROCESSING IN INFANCY

本项目旨在丰富我们对婴儿信息处理速度的本质和发展的理解，并探讨其与工作记忆的关系。这项工作将为信息处理速度的早期发展提供新的理解，信息处理速度是婴儿认知的核心结构之一，也可能是婴儿和儿童后期认知之间连续性的基础之一。主要目的是：(1)确定注意力、情感和抑制能力与视觉信息处理速度的关系程度；(2)检验视觉信息处理速度与构形信息和特征信息编码的关系；(3)表征出生后1年视觉信息处理速度的发展轨迹；(4)工作记忆在同一时期的发展轨迹具有相似性；(5)研究视觉信息加工速度与工作记忆的关系，以及年龄相关的速度变化在多大程度上解释了年龄相关的记忆变化。这些问题将在婴儿出生后的第一年，针对两个截然不同且概念上重要的视觉处理领域：面孔和物体进行研究。目标1和目标2将涉及三个年龄阶段（5、7和9个月）的人脸和物体的平行研究，其中处理速度将通过一个新的任务来评估，即持续熟悉。这项任务包括重复呈现一个熟悉的刺激，每次都与一个新的刺激配对；速度是通过对小说表现出一致的偏好所花费的时间来确定的。注意力和情感将同时被评估，婴儿抑制看和转移目光的倾向也将被评估。目标3 - 5将进行横断面和纵向研究。对3-13个月的婴儿进行连续熟悉任务和测量工作记忆的跨度任务的测试。将比较横截面和纵向样本以及跨域（面部和物体）的发展曲线。

The proposed project is designed to enrich our understanding of the nature and development of speed of information processing in infancy and to explore its relation to working memory. This work will provide new understanding of the early development of speed of information processing, one of the core constructs of infant cognition and possibly one of the foundations of continuity between cognition in infancy and later childhood. The principal aims are: (1) to determine the extent to which attention, affect, and inhibitory ability are related to speed of visual information processing; (2) to examine the relation of speed of visual information processing to the encoding of configural and featural information; (3) to characterize the developmental trajectory of speed of visual information processing over the course of the first year of life; (4) to similarly characterize the developmental trajectory of working memory over the same period; and (5) to examine the relation of speed of visual information processing to working memory, and the extent to which age-related changes in speed account for age-related changes in memory. These issues will be examined in the first year of life for two distinct and conceptually important domains of visual processing: faces and objects. Aims 1 and 2 will involve parallel studies for faces and objects at each of three ages (5, 7, & 9 months) in which speed of processing will be assessed with a new task, continuous familiarization. This task involves repeated presentations of a familiar stimulus, each time paired with a novel one; speed is indexed by the time taken to show a consistent preference for the novel. Attention and affect will be assessed concurrently, as will the infant's propensity to inhibit looking and shift gaze. Aims 3 - 5 will be investigated both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Infants aged 3-13 months will be tested with the continuous familiarization task and a span task measuring working memory. Developmental curves will be compared for cross-sectional and longitudinal samples and across domains (faces and objects).