自闭症儿童利用社会性注意线索习得词语的眼动研究

本研究采用眼动技术考察18名自闭症儿童利用社会性注意线索习得词语的能力。结果表明：1）自闭症儿童具有利用他人视线习得词语的能力;2）不同视线对自闭症儿童的词语习得产生不同的影响;3）自闭症儿童视线追随行为的潜在机制与普通儿童存在差异,自闭症儿童的视线追随行为可能是意识性的诱发行为而普通儿童则是反射性的自发行为。     

合理运用心理规律提高教学效果——浅议无意注意在教学中的应用

本文通过对无意注意到有意注意过渡的分析，帮助教师运用注意理论提高教学效果，使学生更好地完成学习任务。     

注意选择性的发展研究

本研究采用不同语义关系的刺激材料探讨注意选择性的发展.结果表明,注意选择性呈年龄发展趋势,并且儿童与成人显示出了不同的特点:儿童作选择注意时,受目标与背景间语义关系的影响不如成人敏感,并且注意选择性随对目标加工要求的提高而提高,而成人则不受加工方式的影响。     

游戏对于促进儿童心理发展的作用

正如Vygotsky(1978)所说,游戏以一种浓缩的形式包含了所有的成长趋势,儿童主要是通过游戏活动而向前发展的。对游戏与儿童心理发展之间关系的研究早在20世纪初就已开始,近年来人们又进行了更为深入的研究,以下就近年来有关游戏对于促进儿童心理发展的作用的研究进行简单的总结。     

头部朝向在社会性注意转移中的作用

注视指向是非常重要的社会性注意线索,但是在日常情境中,注视指向往往伴随着头部朝向信息,而且两者都包含空间指向信息.已有研究发现头部朝向会影响注视指向知觉的速度和准确性,为注视指向提供参照系,进而会影响注视指向诱发的社会性注意.头部朝向和注视指向加工的神经机制也存在着广泛的重合.因此,除眼睛注视以外,头部朝向也是建构和完善基于心理模型的社会性注意机制的一个关键因素.未来的研究应关注头部朝向与眼睛注视指向共同影响注意转移的作用机制,并且从功能整合的角度开展神经机制研究.     

空白重叠范式对自闭症儿童的早期预测

摘 要 空白重叠范式是研究视觉注意特征常用的实验范式。自闭症儿童普遍存在注意解离缺陷,空白重叠范式揭示出该群体注意解离存在异常。国外开始重视将该范式用于自闭症的预测,而我国在这方面的研究很少。本文对空白重叠范式的操作程序、基本原理和数据分析等内容进行了系统地介绍,并就空白重叠范式在自闭症婴幼儿预测中的作用、使用时需注意的方法论等问题进行了展望,以期促进空白重叠范式在我国自闭症早期预测中的运用。     

急性应激对威胁刺激注意定向和注意解除的影响:认知神经机制研究

急性应激和注意偏向是焦虑障碍和创伤后应激障碍发生和症状保持的两个重要因素。急性应激导致交感神经系统激活以及儿茶酚胺和糖皮质激素分泌增加,因而影响对威胁刺激的注意偏向。但是急性应激如何影响注意偏向中的注意定向和注意解除尚不清楚。本项目采用点探测任务、威胁线索空间提示任务,结合恐惧条件反射、眼动和事件相关电位技术,研究急性应激对注意定向和注意解除影响的认知神经机制。研究结果可为治疗焦虑和创伤后应激障碍提供支持,为公共卫生管理政策的制定提供建议。     

儿童自闭症的历史、现状及其相关研究

Kanner于1943年最先报告了关于自闭症的详细研究.自闭症作为一种症候群,其具体症状因人而异.社会性障碍、交流障碍与想象障碍是自闭症的三个主要障碍,同时又构成诊断自闭症的基础.研究者已经弄清了自闭症的发生率、性别差异、与智商和社会阶层的关系等部分事实.不同的研究者从不同方面解释和说明自闭症,其中“心理理论”说是近年来非常有吸引力的自闭症理论之一.这一理论主张自闭症在“读心理”方面具有障碍.     

自闭症幼儿自主性共同注意的实验研究

为探索和发现自闭症幼儿的自主性共同注意的特征,以6名自闭症幼儿,以及在心理年龄与之匹配的弱智和正常儿童各6名作为研究对象,以实验和准实验的方法,进行此研究。同时还以秒为单位对实验过程与结果进行编码分析。结果表明,自闭症幼儿的自主性视觉方向所及目标物多于人,而人的目标中叉更多地锁定同伴而非教师。自闭症幼儿在唤起他人共同注意时多以“拉”和“抱”来替代指点行为。自主性共同注意的发生率与情绪有密切关系。     

自闭症谱系障碍个体的注意解离

注意解离是注意定向网络的重要组成部分, 指在注意转移过程中对原来刺激进行注意分离的过程。自闭症个体注意解离的早期受损会直接影响其它重要功能的发展, 尤其是唤醒调节和共同注意发展。采用间隙重叠范式的研究发现, 自闭症个体注意解离能力是否异常还存在争议, 被试年龄及取样、测量指标和刺激特征可能是影响的因素; 其神经机制可能涉及额叶、顶叶、小脑和胼胝体等脑区。未来应从脑机制研究入手, 综合考虑被试特征、研究方法和刺激特征对注意解离结果的影响, 明确其在自闭症早期预测和识别中的作用。     

Determinants of Joint Attention in Young Siblings' Play

The nature of joint attention (JA) engagement of 32 sibling pairs (M age older sibling = 55.21 months; M age younger sibling = 19.60 months) was assessed in a free play context. Relations among JA engagement states, both siblings' age, temperament, and language, and older sibling theory of mind were explored. The frequency of coordinated JA was related to features of temperament of both the younger siblings (emotionality) and the older siblings (activity level and sociability). Younger siblings' age was significantly related to siblings' engagement in coordinated JA, whereas the older siblings' age and theory of mind correlated with the frequency of passive JA engagement. Implications regarding the role of partner characteristics in young sibling JA interactions will be discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emergence of Joint Attention: Relationships Between Gaze Following,Social Referencing,Imitation, and Naming in Infancy

The authors investigated the extent to which the joint-attention behaviors of gaze following, social referencing, and object-directed imitation were related to each other and to infants' vocabulary development in a sample of 60 infants between the ages of 8 and 14 months. Joint-attention skills and vocabulary development were assessed in a laboratory setting. Split-half reliability analyses on the joint-attention measures indicated that the tasks reliably assessed infants' capabilities. In the main analysis, no significant correlations were found among the joint-attention behaviors except for a significant relationship between gaze following and the number of names in infants' productive vocabularies. The overall pattern of results did not replicate results of previous studies (e.g., M. Carpenter, K. Nagell, & M. Tomasello, 1998) that found relationships between various emerging joint-attention behaviors.     

Attention, Joint Attention, and Social Cognition

ABSTRACT— Before social cognition there is joint processing of information about the attention of self and others. This joint attention requires the integrated activation of a distributed cortical network involving the anterior and posterior attention systems. In infancy, practice with the integrated activation of this distributed attention network is a major contributor to the development of social cognition. Thus, the functional neuroanatomies of social cognition and the anterior–posterior attention systems have much in common. These propositions have implications for understanding joint attention, social cognition, and autism.     

孤独症儿童共同注意的神经基础及早期干预

共同注意是指两个人共同对某一事物加以注意, 分享对该事物的兴趣, 它是儿童社会认知发展的奠基性能力。首先, 孤独症儿童共同注意发展主要体现在注视转换、主动展示、分享等能力发展滞后及缺陷; 孤独症儿童共同注意的神经基础：应答性共同注意主要涉及后部皮层注意网络(如颞上沟后部、顶内沟等), 自发性共同注意涉及前部皮层注意网络(如前扣带皮层、背内侧额叶等); 最后, 以回合式教法和关键反应训练为基本方法, 论述了共同注意干预的新近模式和效果评估。未来研究应在孤独症儿童的共同注意发展的年龄特征及机制、共同注意的脑区可塑性及脑网络的发展以及开发更有效的干预方法等方面展开大量研究。     

Teaching children with autism to respond to and initiate bids for joint attention

A multiple baseline design across 3 children with autism was used to assess the effects of prompting and social reinforcement to teach participants to respond to an adult's bid for joint attention and to initiate bids for joint attention. Participants were taught to respond to an adult's bid for joint attention by looking in the direction of an object at which the adult pointed, by making a comment about the object, and by looking back at the adult. Additional training and reinforcement were needed to teach the participants to initiate bids for joint attention. Findings are discussed in terms of the social relevance of teaching children with autism to respond to and initiate bids for joint attention.     

Quantifying latent social motivation and its associations with joint attention and language in infants at high and low likelihood for autism spectrum disorder

Social motivation—the psychobiological predisposition for social orienting, seeking social contact, and maintaining social interaction—manifests in early infancy and is hypothesized to be foundational for social communication development in typical and atypical populations. However, the lack of infant social-motivation measures has hindered delineation of associations between infant social motivation, other early-arising social abilities such as joint attention, and language outcomes. To investigate how infant social motivation contributes to joint attention and language, this study utilizes a mixed longitudinal sample of 741 infants at high (HL = 515) and low (LL = 226) likelihood for ASD. Using moderated nonlinear factor analysis (MNLFA), we incorporated items from parent-report measures to establish a novel latent factor model of infant social motivation that exhibits measurement invariance by age, sex, and familial ASD likelihood. We then examined developmental associations between 6- and 12-month social motivation, joint attention at 12–15 months, and language at 24 months of age. On average, greater social-motivation growth from 6–12 months was associated with greater initiating joint attention (IJA) and trend-level increases in sophistication of responding to joint attention (RJA). IJA and RJA were both positively associated with 24-month language abilities. There were no additional associations between social motivation and future language in our path model. These findings substantiate a novel, theoretically driven approach to modeling social motivation and suggest a developmental cascade through which social motivation impacts other foundational skills. These findings have implications for the timing and nature of intervention targets to support social communication development in infancy.

Highlights

• We describe a novel, theoretically based model of infant social motivation wherein multiple parent-reported indicators contribute to a unitary latent social-motivation factor.
• Analyses revealed social-motivation factor scores exhibited measurement invariance for a longitudinal sample of infants at high and low familial ASD likelihood.
• Social-motivation growth from ages 6–12 months is associated with better 12−15-month joint attention abilities, which in turn are associated with greater 24-month language skills.
• Findings inform timing and targets of potential interventions to support healthy social communication in the first year of life.

     

Understanding Teasing: Lessons From Children With Autism

Teasing requires the ability to understand intention, nonliteral communication, pretense, and social context. Children with autism experience difficulty with such skills, and consequently, are expected to have difficulty with teasing. To better understand teasing concepts and behaviors, children with autism, their parents, and age and Verbal-IQ-matched comparison children and parents described concepts and experiences of teasing and engaged in a parent–child teasing interaction. The teasing of children with autism was less playful and provocative and focused less on social norms than that of comparison children. Similarly, parents of children with autism teased in less playful ways. Scores on a theory of mind task accounted for several of the observed differences. Discussion focused on the importance of understanding social context and playful behavior during teasing.     

Evidence of Poor Planning in Children with Attention Deficits

This study examined the planning performance of children with attention deficits, and also investigated the possible interactions between inattention and anxiety in the performance of executive function tasks. A group of 98 children (grades 4 and 6), derived from an initial group of 550, were assigned to an attention difficulties group (AD) and a control group (n = 49 each) based on their scores on a variety of cognitive attention measures and teacher scales of attention and hyperactivity. The two groups were matched on age, gender, parental education, non-verbal and verbal ability. They were compared on Crack-the-Code (C-t-C) action-planning task, embedded and ambiguous figures and Theory of Mind tasks. Analyses indicated that the failure of AD children on cognitive performance measures is linked to planning impairments. The co-occurrence of anxiety, in turn, did not interact with inattention to affect planning performance differentially. Implications of these findings for the current discussion about the cognitive and emotional processes underlying impaired performance among children with attention deficits on executive control tasks are discussed.     

The other side of false belief: Constructing the objectivity of reality

Young children appear not to grasp the independence between objective reality and subjective beliefs, as evidenced by their errors on false belief tasks. Whereas decades of research have examined children's developing understanding of the subjectivity of beliefs, however, almost no research has examined the other side of the issue: How do humans come to understand the objectivity of reality, and why is this understanding important? To help address this gap, this article proposes an evolutionary-developmental account of how the understanding that reality is objective may have emerged in human thinking. Three key steps are highlighted: (i) phylogenetic foundations in great ape competitive mindreading, (ii) ontogenetic foundations in preverbal infant joint attention, and (iii) key experiences of perspectival conflict in linguistic humans. Functionally, the concept of an objective reality facilitated collaborative reasoning and joint decision-making. To arrive at good joint decisions, individuals needed to recognize that both their own beliefs and others' beliefs could be wrong—with respect to the objective reality.