Well-regulated attention, memory, and emotion processes are critical to healthy cognitive and social-emotional development in childhood and beyond. Although we know that from infancy into middle childhood, nearly all children show dramatic improvements in their regulation of these cognitive and emotion processes, the etiology of individual differences in this developmental progression is poorly understood. Current theory postulates that biopsychosocial mechanisms are most likely involved and, in particular, that optimal development of self-regulated cognition and emotion is promoted not only by certain complements of genes associated with frontal lobe architecture and development, but also by co-occurring socialization experiences within the family. We propose that the socialization experiences critical to well-regulated child outcomes go beyond maternal warmth and scaffolding to include the influence of maternal executive functioning. This application is a renewal request for a longitudinal study (HD049878) examining developing interrelations between cognition and emotion from infancy through early childhood in a typically developing sample. The unique feature of our current study is that it grounds cognition-emotion relations within a psychobiological theoretical framework focusing on physiological as well as behavioral indices of cognition, emotion, and their integration. We request funds to extend our study to middle childhood and include academic achievements as outcome measures of individual differences in self-regulation. Our goal for the renewal study is twofold. We will complement our on-going examination of the role of maternal scaffolding and socialization behaviors with examination of the role of maternal executive functioning. We will focus on these maternal contributions to the processes of child cognition-emotion integration in middle childhood and resulting individual differences in academic achievement. There are studies of early childhood self-regulation and effects of preschool cognition on middle childhood academic achievement, but no studies of developing patterns of infant, toddler, and preschool cognition-emotion (behavioral and physiological) contributions to school achievement in middle childhood. We will test models of cognition-emotion development across four developmental periods, as well as examine patterns of developmental trajectories in cognition and emotion that may have implications for various levels of academic achievement. The longitudinal design and psychobiological conceptual framework make our proposed work novel and critical for understanding individual differences in child academic outcomes and in general mental health development.

Public Health Relevance

Although the care giving environment has been given an essential role in social development, little attention has been given to the role of care giving in the development of complex cognitions, which are associated with school achievement, including reading and math. Because of these critical outcomes, there is a need to examine the development of normative child cognitive development in light of maternal socio-emotional and higher order cognitive processing.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HD049878-07
Application #
8619644
Study Section
Biobehavioral Mechanisms of Emotion, Stress and Health Study Section (MESH)
Program Officer
Freund, Lisa S
Project Start
2005-04-01
Project End
2018-02-28
Budget Start
2014-03-01
Budget End
2015-02-28
Support Year
7
Fiscal Year
2014
Total Cost
$546,934
Indirect Cost
$109,267
Name
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
003137015
City
Blacksburg
State
VA
Country
United States
Zip Code
24061
Diaz, Anjolii; Blankenship, Tashauna L; Bell, Martha Ann (2018) Episodic Memory in Middle Childhood: Age, Brain Electrical Activity, and Self-Reported Attention. Cogn Dev 47:63-70
Blankenship, Tashauna L; Keith, Kayla; Calkins, Susan D et al. (2018) Behavioral Performance and Neural Areas Associated with Memory Processes Contribute to Math and Reading Achievement in 6-year-old Children. Cogn Dev 45:141-151
Whedon, Margaret; Perry, Nicole B; Calkins, Susan D et al. (2018) Cardiac vagal regulation in infancy predicts executive function and social competence in preschool: Indirect effects through language. Dev Psychobiol 60:595-607
Perry, Nicole B; Dollar, Jessica M; Calkins, Susan D et al. (2018) Developmental Cascade and Transactional Associations Among Biological and Behavioral Indicators of Temperament and Maternal Behavior. Child Dev 89:1735-1751
Joyce, Amanda W; Friedman, Denise R; Wolfe, Christy D et al. (2018) Executive Attention at Eight Years: Concurrent and Longitudinal Predictors and Individual Differences. Infant Child Dev 27:
Li, Mengjiao; Deater-Deckard, Kirby; Calkins, Susan D et al. (2017) Getting to the Heart of Personality in Early Childhood: Cardiac Electrophysiology and Stability of Temperament. J Res Pers 67:151-156
Broomell, Alleyne P R; Bell, Martha Ann (2017) Inclusion of a Mixed Condition Makes the Day/Night Task More Analogous to the Adult Stroop. Dev Neuropsychol 42:241-252
Swingler, Margaret M; Perry, Nicole B; Calkins, Susan D et al. (2017) Maternal behavior predicts infant neurophysiological and behavioral attention processes in the first year. Dev Psychol 53:13-27
Bacher, Leigh F; Retz, Shirley; Lindon, Courtney et al. (2017) Intraindividual and Interindividual Di?erences in Spontaneous Eye Blinking: Relationships to Working Memory Performance and Frontal EEG Asymmetry. Infancy 22:150-170
Bell, Martha Ann; Ross, Alleyne P; Goodman, Gay (2016) Assessing infant cognitive development after prenatal iodine supplementation. Am J Clin Nutr 104 Suppl 3:928S-34S

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