Psychometrics and Predictive Validity of Infant Learning

项目摘要 感觉运动是一种检测生物体动作与细胞内环境变化之间的感觉运动偶然性的能力。 环境对生存至关重要，影响着社会、运动、情感和认知领域。操作性 条件反射范式提供了一种直接的测量权变学习的方法，并且易于使用 整个婴儿期。这项研究的主要目标是确定是否个体差异， 权变学习在任务和/或发展过程中是一致的或相关的，并确定 这些指标是否能预测未来认知的标准化指标。为此，我们将纵向 使用两个已建立的婴儿操作性条件反射任务--同步 强化范式和训练任务-每一个都涉及不同的反应系统（看与压杆） 还有更好的。尽管学习被普遍认为是人类社会的一个基本组成部分， 行为，经过世纪的行为科学，我们根本不知道是否或在多大程度上， 婴儿期学习测量的个体差异在心理测量学上是一致的，或者他们是否 与更广泛的认知和语言结果直接相关。市场对 在临床试验中纳入学习措施作为早期干预的潜在结果，但这些措施 基本问题以前从未在婴儿期建立或研究过。该提案的特点是 两名研究者在婴儿操作学习范式和进行纵向研究方面具有直接的专业知识， 项目;在这里，他们寻求建立个人差异的基本心理测量特性， 经典参数的年龄内的操作性条件反射跨任务和跨年龄，并建立 这些参数的发展过程。我们还试图确定这些预测的有效性 个体差异，指标本身或其发展功能是否预测 标准化的24个月结果。我们建议使用两个范例，利用不同的操作符（看 和运动动作），其中每一个先前已被确立为有效和可行的出版 文学传统条件反射范式下的学习在人类学领域长期被忽视， 婴儿期;这项研究有可能在婴儿研究和发展科学中恢复学习。给定 在有风险的婴儿样本中注意到了应急学习的差异，学习经常被用于 临床前动物工作，这项工作将有助于提供临床前研究和临床之间的联系 审判我们的研究结果将对临床试验中学习的使用和长期结果产生重要影响 问题研究

PROJECT SUMMARY The ability to detect sensorimotor contingencies between an organism's actions and changes in the environment is essential to survival, impacting social, motor, affective, and cognitive domains. Operant conditioning paradigms provide a direct measure of contingency learning, and are amenable for use throughout infancy. The primary goal of this research is to determine whether individual variations in contingency learning are consistent or correlated across tasks and/or across development, and to determine whether these measures predict future standardized measures of cognition. To this end, we will longitudinally test infants from 6-18 months using two established infant operant conditioning tasks—the synchronous reinforcement paradigm and train task—each involving a different response system (looking vs. lever pressing) and reinforcer. Despite the fact that learning is universally regarded as a fundamental component of human behavior, after over a century of behavioral science, we simply do not know whether or to what degree individual differences in measures of learning in infancy are consistent psychometrically, or whether they are directly associated with broader cognitive and language outcomes. There is substantial demand for the inclusion of measures of learning in clinical trials as potential outcomes for early interventions, but these fundamental issues have never been previously established or investigated in infancy. This proposal features two investigators with direct expertise in operant learning paradigms for infants and in conducting longitudinal projects; here, they seek to establish the fundamental psychometric properties of individual differences in classic parameters of operant conditioning within ages across tasks and across ages, and to establish the developmental course of these parameters. We also seek to determine the predictive validity of these individual differences, whether the indicators themselves or their developmental functions are predictive of standardized 24-month outcomes. We propose to use two paradigms that utilize different operants (looking and motor actions) each of which have previously been established as valid and workable in published literature. Learning within traditional conditioning paradigms has long been neglected in the area of human infancy; this study has the potential to resurrect learning in infant studies and developmental science. Given that differences in contingency learning have been noted in at-risk infant samples and learning is often used in preclinical animal work, this work would serve to provide a connection between preclinical studies and clinical trials. Our findings will have critical implications for the use of learning in clinical trials and long-term outcome studies.