The Development of Selective Attention in Infancy as Measured by Eye Movements

描述(由申请人提供)：对于所有年龄的人来说，一个至关重要的问题是如何有选择地过滤环境中过多的信息，以便进行连贯的信息处理。答案对认知的发展、认知的效率和认知的行为表现至关重要。为了回答这个问题，我们依赖选择性注意的结构，它被描述为大脑从众多可能的对象中抓住一个，而忽略其他对象的过程。选择性注意机制很重要，因为处理资源是有限的，这使得处理视觉世界中的大量信息变得困难。对于婴儿来说，他们不断地受到大量新信息的攻击，他们的处理资源比成年人更低的效率和更有限的处理资源，能够选择性地关注似乎对构建他们的世界的有组织和详细的表征至关重要。这得到了这样一个事实的支持，即某些发育障碍，如注意力缺陷障碍和自闭症，其特征是选择性分配注意力的能力不足。因此，有人建议开展研究，通过使用眼动反应时测量来系统地研究选择性注意机制的发展，从而开始解决我们对选择性注意机制发展的理解上的差距。这种测量方法更适合于评估选择机制，并且更类似于成人选择性注意机制的典型测量方式。此外，通过测量眼动，婴儿和成年人都可以在相同的范式下进行测试，收集相同的定性数据，从而能够更直接地比较婴儿和成年人的选择性注意机制和他们的发展特征。在成人中，已经研究了许多不同的注意选择性机制，特别是前注意和注意机制，从其他潜在目标中选择目标的机制，以及抑制对未选择的信息的加工(即忽略)的机制。所有这些机制在发展研究中都没有得到太多或任何关注。因此，拟议的研究将集中在三种选择性注意机制上，预计婴儿在这些机制中表现出来的实质与成年人没有什么不同，但婴儿的加工速度将比成年人慢。这项拟议中的研究有可能第一次回答一些长期存在的问题，即婴儿理解世界的能力的本质。在未来，这项拟议的研究还将使人们能够更好地了解当婴儿和儿童在理解他们的世界时，发育过程中出了什么问题。了解这些机制对于处理大脑发育和潜在的发育障碍，如注意力缺陷障碍和自闭症至关重要。 公共卫生相关性：认知发展的一个根本重要问题是，认知资源有限的婴儿如何能够有选择地过滤环境中过多的信息，以便对他们的世界进行连贯的学习。因此，这项研究提案的特别目标是通过使用一种新的评估婴儿眼球运动的方法来开始描绘早期发育中选择性注意的机制。这项拟议的研究还有可能让人们更好地了解，当婴儿和儿童在选择性地过滤他们世界中的信息时，注意力发育中出了什么问题，比如注意力缺陷障碍和自闭症。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A question of fundamental importance for all ages is how the overabundance of information in the environment is selectively filtered to allow for coherent information processing. The answer is central to the development of cognition, its efficiency and its behavioral manifestation. To answer this, we rely on the construct of selective attention, described as the process in which the mind takes hold of one out of a multitude of possible objects while ignoring the others. Selective attention mechanisms are important because processing resources are limited making processing the immense amount of information in the visual world all at once difficult. For the infant, who is constantly assailed by a multitude of new information and whose processing resources are less efficient and more limited than adults, being capable of selectively attending would seem to be crucial to constructing an organized and detailed representation of their world. This is supported by the fact that certain developmental disabilities, such as Attention Deficit Disorder and Autism, are characterized by deficits in the ability to selectively allocate attention. Research is therefore proposed to begin to address the gaps in our understanding of the development of selective attention mechanisms by systematically investigating with an eye movement reaction time measure that is more appropriate for evaluating the selection mechanisms and more similar to the manner in which adults' selective attention mechanisms are typically measured. Moreover, by measuring eye movements, both infants and adults can be tested in the same paradigm with the collection of the same qualitative data, enabling a more direct comparison between the selective attention mechanisms of infants and adults and their developmental characteristics. In adults, a number of different mechanisms of attentional selectivity have been investigated, in particular, preattentive versus attentive mechanisms, mechanisms for selecting a target from among other potential targets, and mechanisms of inhibiting processing (i.e. ignoring) of non-selected information. None of these mechanisms have received much or any focus in developmental research. The proposed research will therefore focus on the three selective attention mechanisms and it is expected that the substance of infants' manifestation of these mechanisms will not be different than adults but that the infants' processing will be slowed relative to adults. The proposed research has the potential to, for the first time, answer some long-standing questions about the nature of infants' ability to make sense of their worlds. In the future, the proposed research will also enable a better understanding of what goes wrong in development when infants and children have trouble making sense of their worlds. Understanding these mechanisms is critical to getting a handle on brain development and potential developmental disabilities such as Attention Deficit Disorder and Autism. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: A question of fundamental importance for cognitive development is how infants, with limited cognitive resources, are able to selectively filter the overabundance of information in their environment to allow for coherent learning about their world. The particular objective of this research proposal, therefore, is to begin to delineate the mechanisms of selective attention in early development by use of a new methodology of assessing infants' eye movements. The proposed research also has the potential to enable a better understanding of what goes wrong in attentional development when infants and children have trouble selectively filtering the information in their worlds, such as in Attention Deficit Disorder and Autism.