爬行经验对婴儿迂回行为发展的影响

该研究旨在探讨个体早期第一种自主位移动作－爬行的经验对迂回行为这一重要空间认知能力发展的和用及其特点。     

认知判断中手部动作模拟的fMRI研究

该研究采用功能磁共振成像技术,考察不同条件下进行工具认知判断时手部姿势对认知判断的影响及动作模拟的神经机制。实验发现：手部姿势存在显著的主效应,冲突手部姿势条件下反应时最慢,且冲突手部姿势条件下与不冲突手部姿势条件下、自然状态条件下反应时存在显著差异,自然状态条件与不冲突手部姿势条件下反应时不存在显著差异。另外,f MRI成像结果发现,额中回、额下回、顶下小叶以及辅助运动区在自然状态下有显著激活,表明个体在进行认知判断过程中有动作模拟过程;海马结构、扣带回及楔前叶等与记忆有关的脑区有显著激活,表明身体经验在认知过程的作用。总的研究表明,不同的手部姿势状态对认知判断有不同影响,冲突手部姿势会对动作模拟产生干扰作用,手部动作模拟的神经机制主要涉及镜像神经元区,且在认知判断时存在具身效应。     

进化发展心理学：发展中的人类本性

进化发展心理学研究社会能力与认知能力发展背后的基因与环境机制,以及基因与环境机制在特定社会文化中的表现。进化发展心理学探讨的主要问题与设计到的主要概念包括：（1）自然选择在毕生发展的早期阶段发挥作用;（2）进化发展心理学特别重视适应在婴儿期及儿童期发展中的作用;（3）儿童期的延长有助于儿童学习人类社会的复杂性;（4）发展背景的方法可以用来理解成人外显行为的进化起源;（5）基因与环境因素相互影响约束个体发展;（6）认知能力与行为活动敏感于早期环境,但二者发展也具有可塑性     

儿童早期的自我调控发展

儿童的自我调控在生后就存在并逐渐发展起来,是神经心理的不断成熟以及与环境相互作用的结果,主要涉及情绪过程、认知过程和社会过程,包含了很多策略和技巧。自我调控理论强凋儿童的能动性和灵活性。气质特点可能是造成情绪调控过程中个体差异的一个重要因素,在儿童决定采取调控策略时起着重要的作用。自我调控与行为和社会问题关系密切,幼儿若存在自我调控能力的问题,在有冲突的情形下发生行为问题的倾向较高。     

学习不良儿童的家庭资源对其认知发展、学习动机的影响

运用认知测验法和问卷法,综合考察了１６７中学习不良儿童和１６１名一般儿童的家庭 资料对认知发展、学习以机的影响。表明：学习不良儿童的家庭资源、学习动机和认知发展之间存在着因果关系,家族资源通过两种途径对认知发展发生作用,一是通过影响学习动机促进信知发展二是直接对认知发展发生作用。     

婴儿客体永久性发展机制的研究

客体永久性是婴儿早期发展中一项重要的心理能力,本研究以２０８名８－１１个月的婴儿为被试,采用实验法和访谈法探讨了婴儿客体永久性的发展机制及其发展趋势问题。结果表明：１）我国婴儿的爬行与其客体永久性的发展无直接关系,支持了爬行对婴儿客体永久性发展的作用可能来自爬行经验而不是爬行动作的假设：２）我国婴儿的客体永久性随年龄增长而持续发展,提示爬行并不是客体永久性发展的唯一途径,爬行不能发挥作用时,婴儿的客体永久性可以通过其它途径得到发展;３）在８－１１个月间,我国婴儿的客体永久性达到了阶段Ⅳ水平,８个月的婴儿已经具备了初步的客体永久性。从发展速度来看,婴儿的客体永久性在８、９个月间发展较为迅速,出现了显著的发展性变化,在９－１１个月间没有显著的差异。     

幼儿动作发展与动作抑制研究

运用《儿童动作评估检查表》和停止信号任务,通过教师评定和即时行为实验方法,对40名4～6岁幼儿的动作发展水平、动作发展的内部结构、动作抑制的发展趋势和动作抑制与动作一般发展水平之间的关系进行了详细探讨。结果发现,4～6岁幼儿的动作处于一个迅速发展的时期;幼儿在自身与环境的静止或变动情况下,动作发展水平存在不平衡现象,当儿童自身静止并处于静止的环境中时,动作发展水平显著高于儿童自身移动和环境变动状态下的动作水平;男孩与女孩在动作发展的特定条件下存在差异。同时还发现,幼儿的动作反应抑制能力存在明显的年龄发展趋势,随着幼儿年龄的增长,其动作反应抑制能力增强;动作反应抑制能力与一般动作发展水平之间存在显著相关。     

儿童早期精细动作技能与认知发展的关系

精细动作技能指个体主要凭借手以及手指等部位的小肌肉或小肌肉群而产生的运动, 它可以为个体提供认知经验, 丰富认知对象, 进而促进个体对事物本质的认识。当个体需要将认知资源-注意在两个或多个任务之间进行分配时, 熟练的精细动作可以节省注意资源, 为高级的认知任务更好地服务; 精细动作与认知在发展中不断相互促进, 有些动作是某些认知习得或认知练习的先决条件; 精细动作技能可以预测小学低年级的学业成绩, 尤其是阅读和数学成绩。精细动作技能和认知发展的关系具有大脑神经发育基础, 它们在某种程度上共享相同的脑区, 如小脑和前额叶。因此, 某些认知损伤的病症可以通过精细动作的训练而得到改善和治疗。     

父母婚姻冲突对儿童发展的影响及其机制

婚姻关系是家庭关系中最核心的关系, 家庭中父母婚姻冲突影响着儿童发展。众多研究发现, 父母婚姻冲突对儿童认知发展和情绪社会性发展均有重要影响, 而且父母婚姻冲突影响儿童发展存在复杂的作用机制(如中介机制和调节机制)。父母婚姻冲突对儿童发展的影响主要通过儿童认知-情绪过程和家庭过程来实现, 且这一影响会因多种儿童因素和环境因素的不同而不同。未来研究有必要同时考察父母婚姻冲突对儿童认知发展和情绪社会性发展的影响, 并进一步探究和整合多种作用机制, 为干预方案的制定提供有力支持。     

早期高级认知发展与前额叶功能发育的fNIRS研究

儿童早期阶段是各项认知能力和脑发育的关键阶段。近红外光谱成像技术(fNIRS)凭借其非侵害性、便捷操作以及对头动容忍度高等特点,在早期阶段儿童认知发展与脑发育的研究中得到越来越多的应用。从早期高级认知发展与前额叶功能的单侧优势变化、对应前额叶脑区逐渐专门化、发展关键期与前额叶功能的可塑性,以及前额叶功能异常与早期发展障碍的关系等四个方面对基于fNIRS技术开展的早期认知发展与脑发育的研究进展进行了梳理和分析。指出未来研究应探究儿童早期认知能力发展和脑发育的轨迹及关键期,探讨有发展性障碍家族风险儿童的早期大脑发育特点,为早期教育和发展障碍的早期预警提供依据。     

Associations between gross motor and communicative development in at-risk infants

Infants’ advances in locomotion relate to advances in communicative development. However, little is known about these relations in infants at risk for delays in these domains and whether they may extend to earlier achievements in gross motor development in infancy. We examined whether advances in sitting and prone locomotion are related to communicative development in infants who have an older sibling with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and are at risk for motor and communication delays (heightened-risk; HR). We conducted a longitudinal study with 37 HR infants who did not receive an ASD diagnosis at 36 months. Infants were observed monthly between the ages of 5 and 14 months. We assessed gross motor development using the Alberta Infant Motor Scales (AIMS) and recorded ages of onset of verbal and nonverbal communicative behaviors. Results indicated increased presence of early gross motor delay from 5 to 10 months. In addition, there were positive relations between sitting and gesture and babble onset and between prone development and gesture onset. Thus, links between gross motor development and communication extend to at-risk development and provide a starting point for future research on potential cascading consequences of motor advances on communication development.     

Early Gesture Provides a Helping Hand to Spoken Vocabulary Development for Children with Autism,Down Syndrome,and Typical Development

Typically developing (TD) children refer to objects uniquely in gesture (e.g., point at a cat) before they produce verbal labels for these objects (“cat”). The onset of such gestures predicts the onset of similar spoken words, showing a strong positive relation between early gestures and early words. We asked whether gesture plays the same door-opening role in word learning for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS), who show delayed vocabulary development and who differ in the strength of gesture production. To answer this question, we observed 23 18-month-old TD children, 23 30-month-old children with ASD, and 23 30-month-old children with DS 5 times over a year during parent–child interactions. Children in all 3 groups initially expressed a greater proportion of referents uniquely in gesture than in speech. Many of these unique gestures subsequently entered children’s spoken vocabularies within a year—a pattern that was slightly less robust for children with DS, whose word production was the most markedly delayed. These results indicate that gesture is as fundamental to vocabulary development for children with developmental disorders as it is for TD children.     

Gesture paves the way for language development

In development, children often use gesture to communicate before they use words. The question is whether these gestures merely precede language development or are fundamentally tied to it. We examined 10 children making the transition from single words to two-word combinations and found that gesture had a tight relation to the children's lexical and syntactic development. First, a great many of the lexical items that each child produced initially in gesture later moved to that child's verbal lexicon. Second, children who were first to produce gesture-plus-word combinations conveying two elements in a proposition (point at bird and say "nap") were also first to produce two-word combinations ("bird nap"). Changes in gesture thus not only predate but also predict changes in language, suggesting that early gesture may be paving the way for future developments in language.     

家庭认知环境与0~3岁婴幼儿发展的关系:有调节的中介效应

本研究以5914名0~3岁婴幼儿家长为问卷调查对象,考察了家庭认知环境、入托经历、努力控制对0~3岁婴幼儿发展的影响机制。研究发现：（1）婴幼儿努力控制在家庭认知环境与婴幼儿发展中具有中介效应,即家庭认知环境通过作用于努力控制而对婴幼儿发展产生影响;（2）婴幼儿是否入托在“家庭认知环境→努力控制→婴幼儿发展”这一中介路径的前半段中具有调节作用,当婴幼儿有入托经历时,家庭认知环境对婴幼儿努力控制的影响更大。     

儿童发展与电子媒体：基于生态科技微系统理论的视角

电子产品改变了人们社会活动的模式和生活方式,其低龄化使用也不可避免地影响和塑造了儿童的发展。生态系统理论认为儿童的发展源于儿童与周围环境之间不断的交互作用。生态科技微系统理论是在当今电子科技的环境下以生态系统理论为背景框架提出的解释电子媒体对儿童发展影响的理论模型。电子产品作为儿童学习、娱乐、沟通和展示自我的工具,对儿童的认知方式、情感互动方式和参与社会的方式等都会产生一定的影响。这些影响依赖于三个相互独立又关联的因素之间的作用：儿童自身的特点、电子媒体的内容和特点,以及儿童媒体使用的环境。未来的研究可以从研究手段和研究内容上进一步深化以探讨电子产品的使用和儿童发展的关系。     

Gesture Reflects Language Development: Evidence From Bilingual Children

There is a growing awareness that language and gesture are deeply intertwined in the spontaneous expression of adults. Although some research suggests that children use gesture independently of speech, there is scant research on how language and gesture develop in children older than 2 years. We report here on a longitudinal investigation of the relation between gesture and language development in French-English bilingual children from 2 to 3 1/2 years old. The specific gesture types of iconics and beats correlated with the development of the children's two languages, whereas pointing types of gestures generally did not. The onset of iconic and beat gestures coincided with the onset of sentencelike utterances separately in each of the children's two languages. The findings show that gesture is related to language development rather than being independent from it. Contrasting theories about how gesture is related to language development are discussed.     

Family-level factors of early childhood development: Evidence from rural China

Family-level factors that characterize the home environment are critical inputs to early language and cognitive development, and potential mechanisms for improving developmental outcomes in vulnerable populations. Many studies conducted in high-income and Western settings highlight stimulating parenting, the home language environment, and parental self-efficacy as possible mechanisms of early development, though less is known about how these family-level factors impact child development in low- or middle-income settings. Even less is known about these family-level factors and early childhood development in rural China, where rates of cognitive and language delay in children aged 0–3 years are as high as 45% and 46%, respectively. Using data collected from 77 rural households with children aged 18–24 months in Southwestern China, this study examines the associations between stimulating parenting, the home language environment, and parental self-efficacy, and early cognitive and language development. The results indicate that stimulating parenting was significantly associated with cognitive, language, and overall development; the home language environment was only significantly associated with language development; and parental self-efficacy was not significantly associated with any developmental outcomes. The implications of such findings reveal mechanisms for supporting healthy child development in rural China.     

Early locomotion and the development of spatial language: Evidence from young children with motor impairments

Recent studies show that young children with type-2 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) can succeed in spatial search tasks. Such results suggest that locomotor impairment may not be a risk factor responsible for a dramatic slowing down or deviation in the development of spatial cognition. The present experiment pursues this question in relation to spatial language to determine whether self-produced locomotion is a necessary prerequisite for the normal acquisition of spatial terms. It compares how two groups of young French children (mean age 33 months) comprehend and produce spatial markers: one group of 12 type-2 SMA children and a control group of 12 healthy children. The results show no significant difference between the two groups with one exception: SMA children displayed a better performance when producing markers for the relations in front of and behind. The performance of SMA children suggests that, despite their total deprivation of experience in locomotion, they have the capacity to acquire and to use rich spatial representations that are embodied in the semantics of natural languages.     

How similar are fluid cognition and general intelligence? A developmental neuroscience perspective on fluid cognition as an aspect of human cognitive ability

This target article considers the relation of fluid cognitive functioning to general intelligence. A neurobiological model differentiating working memory/executive function cognitive processes of the prefrontal cortex from aspects of psychometrically defined general intelligence is presented. Work examining the rise in mean intelligence-test performance between normative cohorts, the neuropsychology and neuroscience of cognitive function in typically and atypically developing human populations, and stress, brain development, and corticolimbic connectivity in human and nonhuman animal models is reviewed and found to provide evidence of mechanisms through which early experience affects the development of an aspect of cognition closely related to, but distinct from, general intelligence. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of emotion in fluid cognition and on research indicating fluid cognitive deficits associated with early hippocampal pathology and with dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis stress-response system. Findings are seen to be consistent with the idea of an independent fluid cognitive construct and to assist with the interpretation of findings from the study of early compensatory education for children facing psychosocial adversity and from behavior genetic research on intelligence. It is concluded that ongoing development of neurobiologically grounded measures of fluid cognitive skills appropriate for young children will play a key role in understanding early mental development and the adaptive success to which it is related, particularly for young children facing social and economic disadvantage. Specifically, in the evaluation of the efficacy of compensatory education efforts such as Head Start and the readiness for school of children from diverse backgrounds, it is important to distinguish fluid cognition from psychometrically defined general intelligence.