Classroom learning is impacted by a child's ability to appropriately self-regulate and adjust their state for the task at hand. Self-regulation relies on an individual's ability to fluidly maintain balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. The primary nerve involved in signaling between systems is the vagus nerve. The efficacy of the vagus nerve, called "vagal tone" has been associated with the ability to maintain appropriate balance between systems. Children who grow up in compromised circumstances, including maternal malnutrition or stress and early trauma or malnutrition often have poor vagal tone at the outset, placing them at a biological disadvantage when they enter the classroom setting. A multi-disciplinary team will converge on design and practices for creating technology and algorithms to better assess vagal tone and the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Best practices for conducting continuous collection of simultaneous behavioral and physiological data from multiple children in a natural classroom setting will be addressed as will analysis of the resultant data from both dynamical systems and information theory perspectives. This undertaking should reveal the association of vagal regulation of the nervous system and a child's ability to regulate their cognitive state for classroom learning in a natural social setting. The creation of cyberinfrastructure and tools for collaboration and creation will support the project, training of future scientists, and the scalability of the project. The discovery of clear patterns of data will allow future efforts to address equity in learning by devising ways to facilitate development of vagal tone and/or the ability to regulate the balance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system in those for whom it is compromised at the outset. Data analytics might also reveal recommendations for optimizing the classroom setting to facilitate early self-regulation and learning. Partnerships will allow the broader dissemination of the research findings for inclusion in teacher education.
From a biological perspective, the ability to self-regulate is dealt with through the balance of the brain and bodily systems by effectively balancing the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The primary perpetrator responsible for maintaining this balance is thought to be the vagus nerve, and its efficacy can be approximated through a variety of heart rate and respiration rate comparisons often referred to as vagal tone. Compromised maternal environment, poor nutrition, or early trauma are amongst the conditions that can lead to early developmental differences in vagal tone, posing the question of equity as it relates to the development of regulatory function. This multidisciplinary team led by Dr. Chiba will investigate the role of vagal tone in classroom self-regulation and learning, through convergent scientific approaches that includes development and augmentation of nano-sensor technology to achieve high quality, unobtrusive measurements of vagal tone, and new algorithms for measurement during testing and learning experiences in the classroom. The sensor network will be supported by the development of classroom mapping and cyberinfrastructure for large-scale, real-time data collection and predictive modeling. To scaffold the gap between laboratory hypotheses and contextually-based evidence, an embedded network of sensors for studying physiology as it relates to self-regulatory skills (e.g., executive functions) in the classroom will be developed. Analytics to measure vagal tone across time will enable understanding of the variability in vagal tone and how it relates to concurrent measures of classroom self-regulation. Once conclusions from resultant data are considered to be scientifically reliable, information will be disseminated in a form that is useful for educators. To support the interdisciplinary efforts, this project also includes development of cyberinfrastructure to support convergence research.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
