Improving precision in modeling childhood executive function trajectories using psychometrics

项目总结： 执行功能是高级监督认知技能，对孩子的社会和学业成功至关重要。 它们的核心组成部分包括工作记忆、抑制控制和认知灵活性。的发展。 儿童的执行功能可能会受到许多早期生活风险因素的不利影响，如铅暴露 社会经济地位低。然而，精确测量和建模有两个困难 高管职能，这阻碍了我们对风险因素如何预测高管变动的理解 功能：1)使用单个子绩效任务进入执行功能是很常见的 组件。虽然这可以产生重要的信息，但它也可能导致偏见，因为执行职能 可能很难准确衡量，因为它们是相互依赖的，也依赖于非执行功能 技能。2)对执行职能的纵向发展建模可能具有挑战性，因为 用于评估执行功能的任务会随着孩子的成长而改变。某些任务可能特定于 特定年龄段，不适合其他年龄段。为了解决第一个困难，我们将改进 用成熟的潜变量方法测量执行功能分量的精度 它集成了来自多个任务的输出。初步分析表明，这种方法可以产生 与单独的风险因素相比，提高了风险因素对执行功能组件的影响的可解释性 对每项任务的分析。为了解决第二个困难，我们建议使用高级心理测量学和项目 反应理论方法，以优化的精确度和优化的执行功能的纵向规模 构建跨越所有感兴趣年龄段的有效性。这将使我们能够确定风险因素如何预测 执行功能随时间的变化(例如，发展轨迹)。该提案利用了来自两家公司的数据 由美国国立卫生研究院资助的大型预期出生队列，具有广泛的纵向数据和重复评估 许多执行职能任务，以及风险因素的详细衡量标准(例如，铅暴露、社会经济水平低 状态)。将为所开发的方法开发开放源码、用户友好的软件，包括一个网络 适用于非统计用户的申请。我(谢莉·刘博士)是一名生物统计学家，也是 西奈山伊坎医学院(ISMMS)人口健康科学和政策。ISMMS 为K25提供了一个极好的环境；所有导师和咨询委员会成员都在 ISMMS。我的培训将包括1)正规的研究生水平的课程，关于执行功能发展，孩子 神经心理学，项目反应理论和心理测量量表；2)神经发展和 与我的指导团队一起进行心理测量学；以及3)临床轮换观察神经行为评估。这 培训将补充我在生物统计学方面的现有专业知识。我的目标是成为一个独立的，由R01资助的 研究儿童神经发育及相关风险因素的研究人员。

Project Summary: Executive functions are high-level supervisory cognitive skills vital for a child’s social and academic success. Their core components include working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. The development of executive functions in children can be adversely affected by many early life risk factors, such as lead exposure and low socioeconomic status. However, there are two difficulties to precisely measuring and modeling executive functions, which hamper our understanding of how risk factors can predict shifts in executive functioning: 1) It is common to use a single child performance task to tap into an executive function component. While this can yield important information, it can also lead to bias, because executive functions can be difficult to measure precisely, since they are interdependent and also rely on non-executive function skills. 2) It can be challenging to model the longitudinal development of executive functions because the set of tasks used to assess executive functions can change as a child grows. Some tasks may be specific to a particular age range and not appropriate for other ages. To address the first difficulty, we will improve the precision of measuring an executive function component by using well-established latent variable approaches which integrate output from multiple tasks. Preliminary analyses demonstrate that this approach can yield improved interpretability of a risk factor’s impact on an executive function component, compared to separate analyses of each task. To address the second difficulty, we propose to use advanced psychometric and item response theory methods to create a longitudinal scale of executive functioning with optimized precision and construct validity that span all the ages of interest. This will allow us to identify how risk factors can predict changes in executive function over time (e.g. developmental trajectory). This proposal leverages data from two large, NIH-funded prospective birth cohorts with extensive longitudinal data and repeated assessments of many executive function tasks, and detailed measures of risk factors (e.g. lead exposure, low socioeconomic status). Open-source, user-friendly software for the developed approaches will be developed, including a web application for non-statistical users. I (Dr. Shelley Liu) am a biostatistician and an Assistant Professor in Population Health Science and Policy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS). ISMMS provides an excellent environment for this K25; all mentors and advisory committee members are based at ISMMS. My training will involve 1) formal graduate level coursework on executive function development, child neuropsychology, item response theory and psychometric scaling; 2) tutorials in neurodevelopment and psychometrics with my mentoring team; and 3) clinical rotations to observe neurobehavioral assessments. This training will complement my existing expertise in biostatistics. I aim to become an independent, R01-funded researcher studying child neurodevelopment and associated risk factors.