Psychobiology of Cognitive Development

描述（由申请人提供）：良好调节的注意力，记忆力和情感过程对儿童期及以后的健康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有显着的改善，但对这种发展过程中个体差异的病因学知之甚少。目前的理论假设，生物心理社会机制最有可能参与，特别是，自我调节的认知和情绪的最佳发展不仅是由与额叶结构和发展相关的基因的某些补充，而且还通过家庭内共同发生的社会化经历来促进。我们建议，社会化的经验，以及监管儿童的结果超越了母亲的温暖和脚手架，包括产妇执行功能的影响。本申请是一项纵向研究（HD 049878）的更新申请，该研究在典型发育样本中检查了从婴儿期到幼儿期认知和情感之间的相互关系。我们目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，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童年中期，并将学业成绩作为自我调节个体差异的结果指标。我们的更新研究有两个目标。我们将通过检查母亲执行功能的作用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的贡献，儿童认知情感整合的过程中，在童年中期和由此产生的学业成绩的个体差异。有研究儿童早期自我调节和学前认知对儿童中期学业成就的影响，但没有研究婴儿，幼儿和学前认知-情绪（行为和生理）的发展模式对儿童中期学业成就的贡献。我们将测试四个发展阶段的认知-情感发展模型，并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，使我们提出的工作新颖和理解儿童的学业成绩和一般心理健康发展的个体差异的关键。

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.