Biological and Behavioral Predictors of Early School Success

描述(由申请人提供)：儿童在学龄期的成功或失败是一系列发展结果的重要预测因素。尽管我们理解这些预测关系的存在，但我们对低成就和高成就的轨迹是如何产生的知之甚少，特别是关于早期学术技能的发展前驱。该提案描述了一项新的纵向生物行为研究，对从4岁到一年级的350名儿童进行了不同样本的研究，使用多种方法研究情绪和认知过程的轨迹，以及在过渡到学校期间学习技能和社交技能能力的出现。我们建议考察学龄前和早期儿童的学习投入，作为儿童早期情感、认知和社交技能以及一年级学业成就和社交技能轨迹的中介机制。此外，我们建议考察家庭和学校的背景因素，这些因素调节了这些早期技能和学习投入之间的关系。学习投入被定义为与学校和学习有关的积极情感，对挑战性学术任务的兴趣和坚持不懈，以及积极参与课堂活动。我们建议这些学习投入指数作为早期情绪和认知技能的函数出现并整合在一起，使这一研究计划处于独特的地位，以阐明迄今未被探索或与先前具有发展意义的技能没有很好联系的与学校相关的过程。通过了解学习投入的产生，学习投入是如何受到儿童和环境因素的影响，以及它们之间的相互作用，我们可以制定更有效的干预方法，以提高学习成绩，支持儿童的适应。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children's success or failure in the early school years is an important predictor of a range of developmental outcomes. Despite our understanding that these predictive relations exist, we know very little about how trajectories of low versus high achievement are produced, particularly with respect to the developmental precursors of early academic skills. The proposal describes a novel longitudinal biobehavioral study of a diverse sample of 350 children from age 4 to first grade, using a multi-method approach to study trajectories of emotional and cognitive processes and the emergence of academic skills and social skills competence at the transition to school. We propose to examine learning engagement across preschool and early childhood as the mechanism mediating children's early emotional, cognitive, and social skills and later school success as measured by trajectories of academic achievement and social skills in first grade. Further, we propose to examine the contextual factors in home and school that moderate the relations between these early skills and learning engagement. Learning engagement is defined as positive affect associated with school and learning, interest and persistence in challenging academic tasks, and active participation in classroom activities. We propose that these indices of learning engagement emerge and become integrated as a function of earlier emotional and cognitive skills, making this program of research uniquely positioned to elucidate school-relevant processes that have to date been either unexplored or not well-linked to prior developmentally significant skills. By understanding the emergence of learning engagement and how it is affected by child and environmental factors as well as the interaction between them, we can develop more effective intervention approaches to increase academic achievement and support children's adjustment.