Psychobiology of Cognitive Development

描述（由申请人提供）：良好调节的注意力、记忆和情感过程对儿童及以后健康的认知和社会情感发展至关重要。虽然我们知道，从婴儿期到童年中期，几乎所有的儿童在这些认知和情感过程的调节方面都表现出显著的改善，但这种发育过程中个体差异的病因学尚不清楚。目前的理论假设，生物心理社会机制最有可能参与其中，特别是自我调节认知和情感的最佳发展不仅由与额叶结构和发育相关的某些基因互补促进，而且还由家庭中共同发生的社会化经历促进。我们认为，对良好调节的儿童结果至关重要的社会化经验不仅包括母亲的温暖和脚手架，还包括母亲执行功能的影响。本申请是一项纵向研究（HD049878）的更新请求，该研究检查了典型发展样本中从婴儿期到幼儿期认知和情感之间发展的相互关系。我们当前研究的独特之处在于，它将认知-情绪关系置于心理生物学理论框架内，关注认知、情绪及其整合的生理和行为指标。我们要求资金将我们的研究扩展到儿童中期，并将学业成绩作为个体自我调节差异的结果衡量标准。我们更新研究的目标是双重的。我们将通过研究产妇执行功能的作用来补充正在进行的关于产妇脚手架和社会化行为的作用的研究。我们将关注这些母亲对儿童中期认知-情感整合过程的贡献，以及由此导致的学业成绩的个体差异。幼儿自我调节和学前认知对中期学业成绩的影响研究较多，但婴幼儿和学前认知-情绪（行为和生理）对中期学业成绩的贡献发展模式研究较少。我们将测试四个发展时期的认知-情感发展模型，以及研究认知和情感发展轨迹的模式，这些模式可能对不同水平的学业成就有影响。纵向设计和心理生物学概念框架使我们提出的工作新颖，对理解儿童学业成绩和一般心理健康发展的个体差异至关重要。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Well-regulated attention, memory, and emotion processes are critical to healthy cognitive and social-emotional development in childhood and beyond. Although we know that from infancy into middle childhood, nearly all children show dramatic improvements in their regulation of these cognitive and emotion processes, the etiology of individual differences in this developmental progression is poorly understood. Current theory postulates that biopsychosocial mechanisms are most likely involved and, in particular, that optimal development of self-regulated cognition and emotion is promoted not only by certain complements of genes associated with frontal lobe architecture and development, but also by co-occurring socialization experiences within the family. We propose that the socialization experiences critical to well-regulated child outcomes go beyond maternal warmth and scaffolding to include the influence of maternal executive functioning. This application is a renewal request for a longitudinal study (HD049878) examining developing interrelations between cognition and emotion from infancy through early childhood in a typically developing sample. The unique feature of our current study is that it grounds cognition-emotion relations within a psychobiological theoretical framework focusing on physiological as well as behavioral indices of cognition, emotion, and their integration. We request funds to extend our study to middle childhood and include academic achievements as outcome measures of individual differences in self-regulation. Our goal for the renewal study is twofold. We will complement our on-going examination of the role of maternal scaffolding and socialization behaviors with examination of the role of maternal executive functioning. We will focus on these maternal contributions to the processes of child cognition-emotion integration in middle childhood and resulting individual differences in academic achievement. There are studies of early childhood self-regulation and effects of preschool cognition on middle childhood academic achievement, but no studies of developing patterns of infant, toddler, and preschool cognition-emotion (behavioral and physiological) contributions to school achievement in middle childhood. We will test models of cognition-emotion development across four developmental periods, as well as examine patterns of developmental trajectories in cognition and emotion that may have implications for various levels of academic achievement. The longitudinal design and psychobiological conceptual framework make our proposed work novel and critical for understanding individual differences in child academic outcomes and in general mental health development.