Neurocognitive Development of Children Living in Poverty

描述（由申请人提供）：这个多学科的提案主要关注生活在不同经济劣势和优势水平的学龄前至学龄前儿童在抑制和执行控制功能中的组成认知能力的发展轨迹。虽然许多研究表明经济剥夺与儿童认知发展受损之间存在关联，但尚未有研究探讨经济和环境劣势对执行控制功能内神经认知能力的影响。我们提出贫困对认知发展影响的一种机制可能是通过延迟或执行控制功能受损（例如，工作记忆、抑制），更具体地说，是通过抑制性执行控制功能受损。为了探索这一假设，我们汇集了5个学科——行为神经科学、神经心理学、流行病学、儿童发展和经济学——这些学科代表了几个积极合作的实验室的专业知识，在研究儿童的执行控制功能以及将此类研究应用于高风险人群方面具有相当大的集体经验。该研究样本利用了一个独特的、时间有限的机会，对来自大纽黑文地区、即将年满4岁和5岁的出生儿童进行了深入研究。我们拟从3个收入-需求水平（低于贫困、处于贫困和高于贫困线）和3个种族群体（非裔美国人、西班牙裔美国人和欧洲裔美国人）对男孩和女孩的抑制性执行控制功能中的组成认知能力进行表征(一个2 × 3 × 3的设计，共招募了360名儿童，分别在2个年龄（4岁和5岁），并纵向随访至8岁。通过生长曲线建模，我们将研究这些组成函数是如何在4到8岁的发展过程中建立起来的，以及这些轨迹是否在贫困和环境不利的儿童与非贫困和环境不利的儿童之间有所不同。我们还将研究父母的行为、父母的信念和态度、父母的心理健康和家庭环境如何调节经济劣势与可能对神经认知发展造成的有害影响之间的关系。研究执行控制功能中的抑制过程与研究经济上处于不利地位的人群特别相关，据说在这些人群中，涉及抑制失调的许多发育迟缓和/或发育障碍更为常见。对来自低收入样本的儿童在抑制性执行控制的基本评估方面的发展轨迹有更详细的了解，可能会为贫困如何影响一般认知能力的机制问题提供信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This multidisicplinary proposal focuses on the developmental trajectories of component cognitive abilities within inhibition and executive control functions in preschool to early school aged children living in varying levels of economic disadvantage and advantage. While many studies have shown an association between economic deprivation and impaired cognitive development in childhood, no studies have explored the impact of economic and environmental disadvantage on component neurocognitive capacities within executive control functions. We propose that 1 mechanism for the impact of poverty on cognitive development may be through delays or impaired executive control functions (e.g., working memory, inhibition) and more specifically through an impairment in inhibitory executive control functions. To explore this hypothesis, we bring 5 disciplines together--behavioral neuroscience, neuropsychology, epidemiology, child development, and economics--that represent the expertise of several actively collaborating laboratories with considerable collective experience in studying executive control functions in children and in the application of such studies to high-risk populations. The study sample takes advantage of a unique, time-limited opportunity to follow-up 2 well studied birth cohorts of children, who are from the greater New Haven area and will soon be 4 and 5 years old. We propose to characterize component cognitive abilities within inhibitory executive control functions in boys and girls from 3 income-to-need levels (below poverty, at poverty, and above poverty line) and 3 ethnicity groups (African-American, Hispanic- American and European-American) (a 2 X 3 X 3 design with 360 children total recruited at 2 ages (4 and 5 years) and followed longitudinally through age 8 years. Through growth curve modeling, we will study how these component functions are built up over the course of development from 4 to 8 years, and whether or not these trajectories vary between children growing up in poverty and environmental disadvantage and those not. We will also study how parental behavior, parental beliefs and attitudes, parental mental health, and home environment might moderate relations between economic disadvantage and possible deleterious effects on neurocognitive development. Studying inhibitory processes within executive control functions is particularly pertinent to studies of economically disadvantaged populations in whom a number of developmental delays and/or developmental disorders involving dysregulated inhibition are said to be more common. Having a more detailed understanding of the developmental trajectories of children from low-income samples on basic assessments of inhibitory executive control may inform mechanism questions about how poverty impacts general cognitive capacities.