Proj 5: Early Development (224-250)

拟议研究的首要目标是了解支持高管的陈述 儿童时期的控制及其发展。尽管成熟的人类表现出独特的能力来灵活地 让他们的行为适应不断变化的环境，孩子们可能会表现出令人震惊的失败。例如, 孩子们经常坚持下去，在不再合适的时候重复之前的行为。有很大进步 在研究儿童在执行功能方面表现出的显著发展方面取得了进展。然而，a 仍然需要统一的框架来理解认知过程和潜在的神经因素 这些发展。 这项拟议的研究建立在一个基于生物学的计算建模框架上，用于理解 执行控制的发展。这项工作调查了假设中的两个关键因素 行政控制的发展是日益抽象的、类似规则的表征和 增强以主动形式保持信息的能力，这两者都依赖于前额叶皮质 事态的发展。这些问题是通过对儿童的行为研究、神经成像研究 与成年人，和神经网络模型测试在不同的发展点。这种方法将使我们能够 为了更好地理解执行控制的组成部分及其发展，在认知、计算、 和神经水平。我们追求以下目标： 目标5.1：调查抽象表征、主动表征和 早期发育中的执行控制--对儿童和发育神经的研究 网络模型解决了关于这些因素的初步工作中的关键问题，并系统地 评估这些因素之间的早期发展关系。 目标5.2：调查操纵抽象和主动维护能力的效果 在早期发育阶段，这些关于儿童的研究和开发神经网络模型的重点是 对旨在增强或干扰执行组件的操作的执行控制的影响 控制力。 目标5.3：研究执行控制表征的神经成分 在成人和完全发育的神经网络模型中评估相关的神经底物和特征 有支持行政控制的陈述。 拟议的工作提供了一个连贯的方案，以促进对 行政控制的组成部分，以及这些组成部分和关系的发展变化。这是一个 理解我们独特的人类执行功能能力和导致我们的 增强或损害，进而为典型和特殊人群的应用程序提供信息。

The overarching goal of the proposed research is to understand the representations supporting executive control and its development during childhood. Although mature humans show unique abilities to flexibly adapt their behavior to changing circumstances, children can show stunning failures to do so. For example, children often perseverate, repeating prior behaviors when they are no longer appropriate. Much progress has been made in studying the remarkable developments children show in executive function. However, a unified framework is still needed for understanding the cognitive processes and neural factors underlying these developments. The proposed research builds on a biologically-based computational modeling framework for understanding the development of executive control. This work investigates the hypothesis that two critical factors in the development of executive control are the emergence of increasingly abstract, rule-like representations and increasing abilities to maintain information in an active form, both of which rely on prefrontal cortical developments. These issues are investigated through behavioral studies with children, neuroimaging studies with adults, and neural network models tested at different points in development. This approach will allow us to better understand components of executive control and their development, at the cognitive, computational, and neural levels. We pursue these aims: Aim 5.1: Investigating Relations among Abstract Representations, Active Representations and Executive Control During Early Development These studies with children and developing neural network models address critical questions from preliminary work on these factors, and systematically evaluate early developing relations among these factors. Aim 5.2: Investigating Effects of Manipulating Abstraction and Active Maintenance Abilities During Early Development These studies with children and developing neural network models focus on effects on executive control of manipulations designed to enhance or interfere with components of executive control. Aim 5.3: Investigating Neural Components of Executive Control Representations These studies in adults and fully developed neural network models assess the neural substrates and signatures associated with representations supporting executive control. The proposed work provides a coherent program for advancing understanding of the relations among components of executive control, and developmental changes in these components and relations. This is an essential step in understanding our uniquely human executive function abilities and factors that lead to their enhancement or impairment, and in turn informing applications for both typical and special populations.