Intersensory Processing, Developmental Trajectories, and Longitudinal Outcomes

描述（由申请人提供）：注意力、社交和沟通功能障碍已成为一个重大的公共卫生问题，但我们缺乏一个系统的数据库来表征支持最佳发育结果的基本构建模块的典型发育。注意力是通往我们感知、学习和记忆的大门，然而，它仍然是发展科学中一个研究不足的主题。典型的发育中的婴儿表现出对面部、声音和婴儿指导语言的高度关注，这对认知、社会和语言发展至关重要。相反，儿童 自闭症患者表现出社会定向障碍，其特征是与非社会事件相比，对这些刺激的注意力下降，以及社会和沟通功能的严重缺陷。这些能力主要取决于早期注意力和感官间处理技能，即整合感官信息的能力，特别是在动态面孔，声音和社交活动中。然而，目前还没有个别差异的措施，为婴儿或幼儿的感觉间处理和途径，通过它的感觉间处理技能影响注意力和以后的社会，认知和语言的发展仍然知之甚少，提出了严重的障碍，以确定出现的非典型发展模式在婴儿期。本提案针对这些需要。我们已经开发出了前两个个体差异的注意力和感觉间处理，可用于婴幼儿。他们评估注意力的定向，分离，维持和速度和准确性的感官间处理动态，视听社会和非社会事件。本提案将提供第一个纵向数据集，揭示3至42个月年龄（目标1和2）的典型发育中注意力和感觉间处理的这些基本构件的发育轨迹。这将为识别非典型发展轨迹提供重要基础。使用结构方程方法进行生长曲线建模，然后我们将在18个月、30个月和42个月时测试这些指标的发展轨迹与认知、社会和语言结果之间的关联模型（目标3）。这将阐明最可行的影响模型，通过这些模型，感官间处理和注意力技能影响社会，认知和语言结果，有助于发展理论，知识和指导干预措施。最后，我们开发并测试了一个程序，用于训练感觉间处理技能，并评估其有效性的转移测试（目标4）。改善和促进它的条件将为发展感官间干预奠定基础。这些目标具有高度的健康相关性。它们将揭示婴儿注意力和感觉间处理技能的典型发展及其对儿童结果的影响，提供第一个系统的基础研究机构，旨在相关并易于翻译，以确定注意力和感觉间处理的早期非典型轨迹和指导干预措施。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Disorders of attention, social, and communicative functioning have become a significant public health concern yet we lack a systematic data base characterizing the typical development of basic building blocks that support optimal developmental outcomes. Attention is the gateway to all we perceive, learn, and remember, however, it remains a significantly understudied topic in developmental science. Typically developing infants show heightened attention to faces, voices, and infant directed speech and this is critical for scaffolding cognitive, social, and language development. In contrast, children with autism show social orienting impairments marked by decreased attention to these stimuli as compared with nonsocial events, and serious deficits in social and communicative functioning. These capabilities depend critically on early attention and intersensory processing skills, the ability to integrate information across the senses, particularly in dynamic faces, voics and social events. However, there currently are no individual difference measures of intersensory processing for infants or young children and the pathways by which intersensory processing skills affect attention and later social, cognitive, and language development remain poorly understood, presenting serious obstacles to identifying the emergence of atypical developmental patterns in infancy. The present proposal addresses these needs. We have developed the first two individual difference measures of attention and intersensory processing that can be used with infants and young children. They assess attention orienting, disengaging, maintenance and speed and accuracy of intersensory processing for dynamic, audiovisual social and nonsocial events. The present proposal will provide the first longitudinal data sets revealing developmental trajectories for these basic building blocks of attention and intersensory processing in typical development across 3 to 42 mos of age (Aims 1 and 2). This will provide a critical basis for identifying atypical developmental trajectories. Using a structural equation approach to growth curve modeling, we will then test models of association between developmental trajectories for these measures with cognitive, social, and language outcomes at 18, 30, and 42 mos (Aim 3). This will elucidate the most viable models of influence through which intersensory processing and attention skills affect social, cognitive, and language outcomes, contributing to developmental theory, knowledge, and guiding interventions. Finally, we develop and test a procedure for training intersensory processing skills and assess its effectiveness in a transfer test (Aim 4). Improvement and the conditions that foster it will lay a foundation for developing intersensory interventions. These goals have high health relevance. They will reveal the typical development of infant attention and intersensory processing skills and their effects on child outcomes, providing the first systematic body of basic research designed to be relevant and easily translated to identifying early atypical trajectories of attentin and intersensory processing and guiding interventions.