Biological and Behavioral Predictors of Early School Success

描述（由申请人提供）：儿童在早期学习阶段的成功或失败是一系列发展结果的重要预测指标。尽管我们了解这些预测关系的存在，但我们对低成就与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兆。该提案描述了一项新颖的纵向生物行为研究，对350名从4岁到一年级的不同样本进行了研究，使用多方法研究情感和认知过程的轨迹，以及学业技能和社交技能能力在过渡到学校时的出现。我们建议通过一年级学业成就和社交技能的轨迹来研究学龄前和幼儿期的学习投入，作为儿童早期情感、认知和社交技能以及后来学校成功的中介机制。此外，我们建议研究家庭和学校的环境因素，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相关的积极影响，对挑战性学术任务的兴趣和坚持，以及积极参与课堂活动。我们提出，这些学习参与指数作为早期情感和认知技能的一种功能而出现并整合，使该研究项目具有独特的定位，以阐明迄今为止尚未被探索或与先前发展重要技能没有很好联系的学校相关过程。通过了解学习投入的出现，以及它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来提高学习成绩，并支持儿童的适应。

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.