Investigating the early development of control of attention and Executive Function in typically and atypically developing children

在生活中，我们经常不得不阻止自己做某事（“抑制控制”），在头脑中记住一些信息，同时也增加或改变它（“工作记忆”），并在不断变化的情况下改变我们的行动（“认知灵活性”）。这组技能被称为执行功能（EF）。当我们使用EF技能时，我们可以设定目标并朝着目标努力。毫不奇怪，强大的EF技能与更好的学校表现和更高水平的健康，财富和幸福的晚年生活有关。我的研究的长期目标是找出为什么有些孩子继续发展强大的EF技能，而不是其他人。这些信息将有助于确定哪些儿童最有可能出现不良EF，并设计有针对性的支持方案，以推动他们的发展取得更积极的成果。2011年艾伦关于儿童早期干预的评论强调了生命的前3年对早期发展的重要性，并认为早期支持的重要性，而大脑对变化的反应最灵敏。然而，目前建立的EF措施只适用于2.5岁以上的儿童，很难确定那些最需要早期帮助的儿童：我的研究旨在通过开发新的方法来测量EF和婴幼儿注意力技能的差异来解决这个问题。自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）与EF的困难增加有关。在我的博士学位期间，我研究了患有ASD风险增加的儿童EF的早期发展，因为他们有一个已经诊断的哥哥姐姐。为了做到这一点，我不得不开发新的方法来测量幼儿的EF，他们理解复杂指令的能力有限。我的测量方法包括“眼动追踪”任务，它使我们能够准确记录幼儿在哪里看屏幕上不同的图像，以及看了多长时间，解决问题的游戏和触摸屏任务。我的初步结果表明，EF技能的差异可以在2岁的儿童中看到，并且EF技能较差与ASD的症状更严重有关：这对于这些幼儿可能受益的早期支持非常重要。我在博士期间还发现，婴儿控制注意力能力的发展差异对以后的EF技能有影响，这增加了我们甚至可以在2岁之前发现一些警告信号的可能性。在我的研究中，我计划通过微调我对婴儿的测量来探索这种令人兴奋的可能性，并使用一系列方法来更深入地了解婴儿的大脑和行为在生命的最初几年是如何发展的。为了做到这一点，我将把婴儿喜欢的简单游戏和玩具与高科技（但绝对安全）方法结合起来，用这些方法我可以测量他们的大脑和心脏活动。我还将检查我们在实验室环境中捕获的内容是否与儿童的日常行为相对应，方法是将实验室测量的表现与我正在开发的一份新的父母问卷的回答进行比较，以了解家庭中的相关行为。通过这些措施的结合，我希望能够更多地了解婴儿能够掌握的EF相关技能的范围，并开始揭示这些行为如何与他们发育中的大脑变化相关联。我将与其他研究人员、医疗工作者和早期干预提供者分享我的研究结果和正在制定的措施，以加速为需要早期支持的儿童制定筛查和干预计划，以充分发挥他们的潜力。

Often in life we have to stop ourselves from doing something ('inhibitory control'), to keep some information in mind whilst also adding to or changing it ('working memory') and to switch our actions during a changing situation ('cognitive flexibility'). This group of skills is known as Executive Function (EF). When we use EF skills we can set and work towards goals. Not surprising then that strong EF skills are linked to better performance at school and higher levels of health, wealth and happiness in later life. The long-term aim of my research is to find out why some children go on to develop strong EF skills and not others. This information will be useful for identifying which children are most at risk for poor EF, and for designing targeted support programmes to nudge their development towards a more positive outcome. The 2011 Allen Review on Early Intervention for Children highlighted the first 3 years of life as critical for early development, and argued for the importance of early support whilst the brain is most responsive to change. However, current established measures of EF are only suitable for children older than 2.5 years, making it difficult to identify those children most in need of early help: my research aims to address this issue by developing new ways of measuring differences in EF and attention skills in infants and toddlers. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been linked to increased difficulties with EF. During my PhD I studied the early development of EF in children with an increased risk of developing ASD, because they have an older sibling already with a diagnosis. To do this, I had to develop new ways of measuring EF in toddlers, who are limited in terms of their ability to understand complex instructions. My measures include 'eye-tracking' tasks which enable us to record exactly where, and for how long, toddlers look at different images on a screen, problem-solving games and touchscreen tasks. My initial results suggest that differences in EF skills can be seen in children by age 2 years, and that poorer EF skills are linked to more severe symptoms of ASD: this is important for the kinds of early support that such toddlers might benefit from. I also found during my PhD that differences in the development of babies' ability to control their attention has an influence on later EF skills, raising the possibility that we can spot some warning signs even earlier than age 2. In my fellowship I plan to explore this exciting possibility by fine-tuning my measures for babies and using a range of approaches to get a deeper understanding of how babies' brains and behaviour develop during these critical first years of life. To do this, I will combine the kinds of simple games and toys that babies enjoy with high-tech (but perfectly safe) methods with which I can measure their brain and heart activity. I will also check that what we capture in a laboratory setting corresponds to children's day-to-day behaviour by comparing performance on the lab measures with responses on a new parent questionnaire that I am developing to find out about related behaviours in the home. With this combination of measures I hope to be able to find out more about the range of EF-related skills that babies are capable of, and to start to uncover how these behaviours are linked to changes in their developing brain. I will share both my results and the measures that I am developing with other researchers, healthcare workers, and early intervention providers, in order to accelerate the development of screening and intervention programmes for children who need early support in order to achieve their full potential.