The overarching goal of the proposed research is to understand the representations supporting executivecontrol and its development during childhood. Although mature humans show unique abilities to flexiblyadapt their behavior to changing circumstances, children can show stunning failures to do so. For example,children often perseverate, repeating prior behaviors when they are no longer appropriate. Much progresshas been made in studying the remarkable developments children show in executive function. However, aunified framework is still needed for understanding the cognitive processes and neural factors underlyingthese developments.The proposed research builds on a biologically-based computational modeling framework for understandingthe development of executive control. This work investigates the hypothesis that two critical factors in thedevelopment of executive control are the emergence of increasingly abstract, rule-like representations andincreasing abilities to maintain information in an active form, both of which rely on prefrontal corticaldevelopments. These issues are investigated through behavioral studies with children, neuroimaging studieswith adults, and neural network models tested at different points in development. This approach will allow usto better understand components of executive control and their development, at the cognitive, computational,and neural levels. We pursue these aims:
Aim 5. 1: Investigating Relations among Abstract Representations, Active Representations andExecutive Control During Early Development These studies with children and developing neuralnetwork models address critical questions from preliminary work on these factors, and systematicallyevaluate early developing relations among these factors.
Aim 5. 2: Investigating Effects of Manipulating Abstraction and Active Maintenance AbilitiesDuring Early Development These studies with children and developing neural network models focus oneffects on executive control of manipulations designed to enhance or interfere with components of executivecontrol.
Aim 5. 3: Investigating Neural Components of Executive Control Representations These studiesin adults and fully developed neural network models assess the neural substrates and signatures associatedwith representations supporting executive control.The proposed work provides a coherent program for advancing understanding of the relations amongcomponents of executive control, and developmental changes in these components and relations. This is anessential step in understanding our uniquely human executive function abilities and factors that lead to theirenhancement or impairment, and in turn informing applications for both typical and special populations.
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