SPEED OF INFORMATION PROCESSING IN INFANCY

该项目旨在丰富我们对婴儿期信息加工速度的本质和发展的理解，并探索其与工作记忆的关系。这项工作将对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，也可能是婴儿期和儿童期认知连续性的基础之一。主要目的是：(1)确定注意力、情感和抑制能力与视觉信息加工速度的关系；(2)考察视觉信息加工速度与结构和特征信息编码的关系；(3)表征出生第一年期间视觉信息加工速度的发展轨迹；(4)类似地表征同一时期工作记忆的发展轨迹；(5)研究视觉信息处理速度与工作记忆的关系，以及与年龄相关的速度变化在多大程度上解释了与年龄相关的记忆变化。这些问题将在生命的第一年针对视觉处理的两个截然不同且概念上重要的领域进行研究：人脸和物体。目标1和目标2将涉及对三个年龄段(5、7和9个月)的面孔和物体的平行研究，其中将通过一项新的任务--持续熟悉来评估加工速度。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；速度是根据显示对小说的一致偏好所花费的时间来索引的。将同时评估注意力和情感，以及婴儿抑制注视和转移凝视的倾向。将对AIMS 3-5进行横向和纵向调查。3-13个月大的婴儿将接受连续熟悉任务和测量工作记忆的广度任务的测试。将比较横截面和纵向样本以及跨域(面和对象)的展开曲线。

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).