The proposed research will confirm and extend previous work indicating that frontal lobe maturation underlies many of the important cognitive advances of the first years of life. The present set of experiments will focus on two fundamental cognitive skills known to be subserved by the frontal lobe: relating information over a temporal or spatial separation and inhibiting predominant action tendencies. Infants ranging in age from 6-18 months will be tested on 5 tasks directly linked to frontal lobe function. The research will chart the precise developmental progression for acquisition of the relational and inhibitory abilities required by these tasks. This work will provide a bridge beteen two previously disparate but highly complementary fields of inquiry, developmental psychology and the neurobiology of cognition. Its results will have important theoretical, practical, and clinical implications: (1) They should yield new interpretations of the what is developing during the first years based on our knowledge of frontal lobe function. (2) By delineating developmental sequences through which all children progress the proposed research should ease parental concerns and provide guidance for educators in the design of pedagogical practices. (3) Finally, it is hoped that this work will lead to standardized, non-invasive markers for assessing CNS insult and integrity during early development.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
7R01MH041842-03
Application #
3380715
Study Section
Cognition, Emotion, and Personality Research Review Committee (CEP)
Project Start
1988-08-01
Project End
1990-08-31
Budget Start
1988-09-15
Budget End
1990-08-31
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
1988
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Pennsylvania
Department
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
042250712
City
Philadelphia
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
19104
Diamond, Adele (2007) Consequences of variations in genes that affect dopamine in prefrontal cortex. Cereb Cortex 17 Suppl 1:i161-70
Diamond, Adele; Lee, Eun Young; Hayden, Michael (2003) Early success in using the relation between stimuli and rewards to deduce an abstract rule: perceived physical connection is key. Dev Psychol 39:825-47
Diamond, Adele; Kirkham, Natasha; Amso, Dima (2002) Conditions under which young children can hold two rules in mind and inhibit a prepotent response. Dev Psychol 38:352-62
Diamond, A; Lee, E Y (2000) Inability of five-month-old infants to retrieve a contiguous object: a failure of conceptual understanding or of control of action? Child Dev 71:1477-94
Diamond, A; Churchland, A; Cruess, L et al. (1999) Early developments in the ability to understand the relation between stimulus and reward. Dev Psychol 35:1507-17
Diamond, A; Prevor, M B; Callender, G et al. (1997) Prefrontal cortex cognitive deficits in children treated early and continuously for PKU. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 62:i-v, 1-208
Diamond, A; Taylor, C (1996) Development of an aspect of executive control: development of the abilities to remember what I said and to ""do as I say, not as I do"". Dev Psychobiol 29:315-34
Diamond, A; Herzberg, C (1996) Impaired sensitivity to visual contrast in children treated early and continuously for phenylketonuria. Brain 119 ( Pt 2):523-38
Diamond, A (1996) Evidence for the importance of dopamine for prefrontal cortex functions early in life. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 351:1483-93;discussion 1494
Diamond, A (1995) Evidence of robust recognition memory early in life even when assessed by reaching behavior. J Exp Child Psychol 59:419-56

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