Where orchids and dandelions grow: investigating differential susceptibility to environmental influences during early learning

这项研究建议调查两个领域。首先，将首次记录儿童在室内和室外环境中的生理压力和注意力、学习和社交行为的小范围波动。这将允许评估室内和室外环境中儿童生理压力水平的小范围波动如何不同，并衡量这些波动如何影响儿童的认知和社会行为。其次，这项研究将调查教育环境对一些孩子的生理压力、注意力和学习的影响是否比其他孩子更大。先前的研究表明，一些孩子对环境的影响非常敏感(被称为“兰花”儿童)，而另一些孩子则不那么敏感(“蒲公英”)[9]。然而，据我们所知，以前还没有研究过儿童的表型敏感性是否会影响他们在教育环境中的行为。

This study proposes to investigate two areas. First, for the first time, children's small-scale fluctuations in physiological stress and attention, learning and social behaviours in indoor and outdoor settings will be recorded. This will allow for the assessment of how small-scale fluctuations in children's levels of physiological stress differ between indoor and outdoor settings, and to measure how these fluctuations influence children's cognition and social behaviour. Second, the research will investigate whether the educational environment influences physiological stress, attention and learning in some children more than others. Previous research has suggested that some children are phenotypically sensitive to environmental influences (known as 'orchid' children) and others are less so ('dandelions') [9]. However, no previous research has, to our knowledge, investigated whether children's phenotypical sensitivity influences their behaviour within educational settings.