Scientific and Administrative Core

这个新的计划项目提案反映了跨比较心理学，认知心理学，发展心理学和神经心理学的独特，富有成效和重要的研究计划的下一步。来自NICHD的资金是支持格鲁吉亚州立大学语言研究中心研究的主要手段，该中心是世界知名的灵长类动物语言和认知研究资源。在NICHD的支持下，一群独特而奇妙的动物已经被饲养，训练，维护和测试，以交流和理解，计数和执行基本的组合操作，并展示了一系列其他认知能力，使它们特别适合与人类成人和儿童进行比较。现在的历史先例 建议概述如下。 在语言研究中心早期的资助周期中，科学家们研究了猿类能够获得类似人类语言的程度。他们进一步探讨了从这项研究中得出的原则对沟通障碍儿童干预的适用性。在最近的资助周期中，我们的研究重点转向了“语言训练如何改变认知能力？也就是说，“一个有机体在接受语言训练后能做什么它不能做的事情？”或者更广泛地说，“语言在认知中的作用是什么？”“解决这些问题涉及到记录有语言经验的猿类的认知能力，将这些猿类的表现与没有语言训练的黑猩猩的任务表现进行比较（包括我们的科学家测试的那些以及文献中的那些），检查其他非人类灵长类动物（例如，恒河猴）在缺乏语言能力的情况下可以做什么，并将非人类灵长类动物的认知能力与观察到的具有正常语言发育的人类成人和儿童的认知能力进行比较。 在本提案中，我们继续并显著扩展了这一传统，再次将非人灵长类动物行为与儿童和成人行为的比较作为研究策略，并在翻译策略中对特定儿童和成人群体进行干预。与此同时，目前的项目代表了对非人类灵长类物种研究的重大扩展。在语言研究中心获得一个卷尾猴群体后，我们比较三个非人类物种（大脑大小和发育非常不同，社会结构非常不同，记录的学习历史非常不同）的认知能力的能力要大得多。最后，目前的建议也代表了一个扩展的数量和范围的认知能力进行研究，因为我们建议测试跨物种的原则，从学习，感知，注意力，执行功能，元认知，分类，记忆，行为自我调节和解决问题的系统研究。鉴于这种增长，我们决定，目前的建议是更好地铸造作为一个新的计划项目，而不是作为我们以前的研究计划的延续。

This new program-project proposal reflects the next step in a unique, productive, and important program of research that spans comparative psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and neuropsychology. Funding from NICHD serves as the majority means of support for the research at the Language Research Center at Georgia State University, a world-renowned resource for the study of language and cognition across primate species. A colony of unique and wonderful animals have been raised, trained, maintained and tested with NICHD support to communicate and to comprehend, to count and to perform elementary combinatorial operations, and to demonstrate a range of other cognitive abilities that make them singularly suitable for comparison to human adults and children. The historical antecedents of the present proposal are outlined below. In the eartier funding cycles at the Language Research Center, scientists examined the degree to which apes could acquire human-like language. They further explored the applicability of principles derived from this research into intervention for children with communicative disabilities. In the most recent funding cycles, our research focus shifted to "How does language training alter cognitive competency?" That is, "What can an organism do following language training that it couldn't do otherwise?" or more broadly, "What is the role of language in cognition?" Answering these questions involves the documentation of the cognitive abilities of language-experienced apes, comparison of these apes' performance with task performance by chimpanzees without language training (including those tested by our scientists as well as those in the literature), examination of what other nonhuman primates (e.g., rhesus monkeys) can do in the absence of language abilities, and comparison of nonhuman pnmates' cognitive abilities to those observed for human adults and children with normal language development. In the present proposal, we continue and significantly expand this tradition, including again the comparison of nonhuman primate behavior to the behavior of children and adults as a research strategy and intervention with specific populations of children and adults in a translational strategy. At the same time, the present programproject represents a significant expansion with respect to nonhuman primate species being studied. With the acquisition of a capuchin monkey colony at the Language Research Center, our capacity is much greater for comparing cognitive competencies across three nonhuman species (with very different brain sizes and developments, very different social structures, and very different documented learning histories). Finally, the present proposal also represents an expansion with respect to number and range of cognitive competencies to be studied, as we propose to test the generality across species of principles denved from the systematic study of learning, perception, attention, executive function, metacognition, categorization, memory, behavioral selfregulation, and problem solving. Given this growth, it was determined that the present proposal was better cast as a new program-project rather than as a continuation of our previous research program.