Psychobiology of Cognitive Development

描述(由申请人提供)：良好调节的注意力、记忆和情绪过程对儿童及以后的健康认知和社会情绪发展至关重要。虽然我们知道，从婴儿期到儿童期中期，几乎所有的儿童在对这些认知和情感过程的调节方面都有显著的改善，但对这种发育过程中个体差异的原因却知之甚少。目前的理论假设，生物、心理和社会机制最有可能参与其中，特别是自我调节认知和情绪的最佳发展不仅受到与额叶结构和发育相关的某些基因的补充，而且还受到家庭内共同出现的社会化经历的推动。我们建议，对良好管控的儿童结果至关重要的社会化经验，不只是母亲的温暖和脚手架，还包括母亲执行功能的影响。这项申请是对一项纵向研究(HD049878)的更新请求，该研究在一个典型的发展中样本中考察从婴儿期到幼儿期认知和情绪之间的发展相互关系。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的理论框架内，重点关注认知、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，并将学业成绩作为自我调节方面个体差异的结果衡量标准。我们对更新研究的目标有两个。我们将用对母亲执行功能的作用的检查来补充我们正在进行的对母亲脚手架和社会化行为的作用的检查。我们将重点关注这些母亲对儿童认知过程的贡献--童年中期的情绪整合以及由此导致的学业成就的个体差异。有关于幼儿自我调节和幼儿认知对幼儿中期学业成就影响的研究，但没有关于幼儿、幼儿和幼儿认知的发展模式-情绪(行为和生理)对幼儿中期学业成就的贡献的研究。我们将测试四个发展阶段的认知-情绪发展模型，并检验认知和情绪的发展轨迹模式，这可能会对不同水平的学业成就产生影响。纵向设计和心理生物学的概念框架使我们提出的工作具有新颖性，对于理解儿童学习成绩和一般心理健康发展的个体差异具有重要意义。

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.