The Development of Optimism in Preschool Age Children: Individual Differences and Implications for Resiliency and Mental Health

项目摘要/摘要 乐观主义--一种高估积极未来结果的认知偏差--可能在 生活，推动孩子们如何学习，如何面对挑战，如何在挫折面前坚持下去。大约80%的成年人 乐观偏向的预测，尽管乐观是适应性的，并提供激励、社交和健康 除了好处，几乎没有任何实证研究测试乐观情绪是如何发展起来的。此外，缺乏乐观偏见--要么 表现为现实主义或悲观主义--与青少年和成年人的抑郁有关，并可能由早期的 生活经历。我的目标是制定一个完整和系统的框架，以发展乐观情绪 学龄前儿童，重点关注早期经历(积极和消极)在这些过程中的作用，以及 明确早期乐观情绪和抑郁症状/消极影响状态之间的联系。估计为1-2% 的学龄前儿童表现出符合重度抑郁症诊断标准的症状，而9%-12%的儿童表现出 亚临床症状。此外，这些患病率在弱势背景的儿童中可能更高，而且 当考虑负面影响时，影响范围更广。我的预测是，乐观情绪在很大程度上很早就出现了， 影响孩子们学习和了解世界的方式。当他们体验事件结果和概率推理时 随着经济形势的改善，他们乐观预测的幅度就会降低。此外，不同的发展轨迹可能 在经历了更多负面生活事件的儿童中，乐观情绪下降得更厉害，这加剧了 他们面临的劣势。早期缺乏乐观情绪也可能是学龄前儿童和/或抑郁症的关键症状 使症状持续存在而不是发展。我们实验室的最新数据表明，至少有一部分学龄前儿童确实有 乐观主义偏向--他们对与自己有关而与他人无关的事件做出乐观的预测--提供了最初的 支持这些预测。拟议的研究将测试来自种族和社会经济差异的3至5岁儿童。 确定早期乐观情绪表达和保持的背景，社会经济和家庭因素影响 乐观主义，以及乐观主义如何指导典型发育中的儿童和抑郁症加重的儿童的学习 症状。我介绍了新的实验方法来测试学龄前儿童的乐观、学习和概率推理能力， 再加上关于家庭背景、孩子的经历、激励方法、育儿方式的广泛的父母报告 风格，以及对儿童抑郁的既定衡量标准。在实验中，我将测试孩子们是否提供乐观、准确或 对事件结果的悲观预测，评估乐观中与领域和状态相关的变异性，并确定 儿童将新的积极但不是消极的信息纳入他们关于事件发生可能性的信念中(如 乐观的成年人会这样做)。这些措施也将适用于过度抽样患有重度抑郁的学龄前儿童。 症状。这里概述的综合方法使用创新的方法来回答有关 乐观主义的发展。这些研究将阐明乐观偏向的范围和发展轨迹。 学龄前儿童，以及抑郁的早期风险因素是否与乐观情绪的下降有关。研究结果还表明， 有可能指出早期复原力的标志，并为基于认知的预防干预提供信息。

Project Summary/Abstract Optimism – a cognitive bias to overestimate positive future outcomes – may play a critical function in the early years of life, driving how children learn, confront challenges, and persevere in the face of setbacks. Roughly 80% of adults make optimistically biased predictions, and although optimism is adaptive and provides motivational, social, and health benefits, virtually no empirical research has tested how optimism develops. Further, the lack of an optimism bias – either presented as realism or pessimism – is associated with depression in adolescents and adults, and may be driven by early life experiences. My objective is to develop an integrated and systematic framework for the development of optimism in preschool-aged children, focusing on the role of early experience (positive and negative) on these processes, and specifying connections between early optimism and depressive symptoms/negative affect states. Estimates are that 1-2% of preschoolers exhibit symptoms that meet the diagnostic criteria for Major Depressive Disorder, whereas 9-12% exhibit sub-clinical symptoms. Further, these prevalence rates are likely higher in children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and when considering negative affect more widely. My predictions are that optimism is present early in a broad capacity and influences how children learn from and about the world. As they experience event outcomes, and probabilistic reasoning improves, the magnitude of their optimistic predictions diminishes. Further, divergent developmental trajectories may emerge such that optimism declines more steeply in children who experience more negative life events, compounding the disadvantages they face. Lack of early optimism may also be a key symptom of depression in preschoolers and/or perpetuate symptoms over development. Recent data from our lab indicate that at least a subset of preschoolers do have an optimism bias – they make optimistic predictions for events that concern themselves but not others – providing initial support for these predictions. The proposed studies will test 3- to 5-year-olds from racially and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds to determine how early optimism is expressed and maintained, socioeconomic and family factors affecting optimism, and how optimism guides learning in typically developing children and those with elevated depressive symptoms. I introduce new experimental methods to test optimism, learning, and probabilistic reasoning in preschoolers, coupled with extensive parent reports on family background, children's experiences, motivational approach, parenting style, and an established measure of child depression. Experimentally, I will test if children offer optimistic, accurate, or pessimistic predictions for event outcomes, assess domain and state-related variability in optimism, and determine if children incorporate new positive, but not negative, information into their beliefs about how likely an event is to occur (as optimistic adults do). These measures will also be administered to preschoolers oversampled for elevated depressive symptoms. The comprehensive approach outlined here uses innovative methodology to answer critical questions about the development of optimism. These studies will elucidate the scope and developmental trajectory(ies) of the optimism bias in preschoolers, and whether early risk factors for depression link to decreases in optimism. The findings also have the potential to point to markers of early resiliency and inform cognitive-based preventive interventions.