Characterizing pet experience in infancy & the relation to cognitive development

描述婴儿期宠物的经历

• 批准号: 8207162
• 负责人: LISA M OAKES
• 金额: $ 7.11万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-12-01 至 2013-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8207162
• 关键词: Address; Adult; American; Animal Experiments; Animals; Caregivers; Caring; Child; Childhood; Cognition; Cognitive; Companions; Complement; Conceptions; Data; Databases; Development; Environment; Exposure to; Eye; Face; Grief reaction; Health; Hearing; Home environment; Household; Human; Image; Individual Differences; Infant; Infant Development; Institution; Intervention; Interview; Knowledge; Language Development; Learning; Life; Literature; Longevity; Methods; Modeling; Outcome; Parents; Perception; Poverty; Psyche structure; Questionnaires; Reporting; Role; Scanning; Shapes; Source; Stimulus; Testing; Therapeutic; Time; Variant; Visual; Work; base; companion animal; disability; early experience; experience; infancy; infant animal; interest; pet animal; psychologic; research study; response; self esteem; tool

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Human-animal interactions have been studied for decades, characterizing the quality of such interactions and the effect they have on psychological functioning such as self-esteem and how people deal with grief. This work has extended to childhood, showing that many of the beneficial effects of relationships with companion animals observed with adults are also true in children. However, little is known about infants' relationships and interactions with animals, and how such experiences contribute to development. It is unknown, for example, how parents encourage or shield infants from interactions with companion animals, and whether interactions with animals contributes to infants' rapidly developing mental functioning. Therefore, a complete understanding of human-animal interactions, and how such interactions influence development, requires characterizing infants' experiences with companion animals. Characterizing infants' interactions and relationships with animals is also important because infant development is shaped by their experience-they learn the language they hear, the kind of faces they look at, and to interact with the kinds of objects in their environment. Moreover, differences in experience can have a profound effect on healthy development. Children who are raised in institutions, in poverty, or without a caring attentive caregiver have different developmental outcomes than children who are raised under other conditions. One common difference between children is the presence of pets in the home. Examining variations in infants' experience with pets, and how those variations contribute to their developing cognitions about animals, provides a model for systematically studying environmental influences on infant development as well as provides much needed information about the quality and quantity of infants' experience with companion animals. Although infants' perception of and learning about animal stimuli has been studied for decades, there has been little attempt to relate this learning to their experience with pets in the home. These previous studies have provided significant understanding into infants' basic perception of animals, revealing that by 3 to 4 months infants have sophisticated abilities to discriminate between, remember, categorize a wide variety of animals. Recently, infants' experience with pets in the home has been recognized as a potential contributor to this early development. This project will provide detailed information characterizing the quality and quantity of infants' interactions with animals through interviews with parents (Experiment 1), parental responses to questionnaires (Experiment 2), and observations in the home (Experiment 3). The effect of differences in infants' interactions will be examined by evaluating how infants with different experiences visually scan naturalistic scenes of infants in everyday activities in the presence of animals (Experiment 4). The results of these experiments will add to our understanding of human-animal interactions across the lifespan and begin to uncover the ways in which relationships with companion animals contributes to infants' development. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Human-animal interactions can have a profound effect on psychological functioning in children and adults, however we know little about the kinds of interactions young infants have with animals, or the effects of such interactions on infant development. Extreme differences in early experience can produce differences in developmental outcome. Thus, it is possible that infants who have pets-or who are encouraged to have relationships with companion animals-develop differently than infants who do not have pets. Understanding variations in infants' pet experiences, and how such variations contribute to infants' developing cognitions about animals, is therefore important for understanding the role of experience on infant development broadly, and for understanding how experience with companion animals in particular influences typical development. The knowledge gained from this project may be important for developing interventions to help provide critical experiences that will promote healthy development.

描述（由申请人提供）：数十年来已经研究了人类与动物的互动，描述了这种互动的质量以及它们对自尊心以及人们如何应对悲伤等心理功能的影响。这项工作已扩展到童年，表明儿童在儿童中与成年人观察到的伴侣动物的关系的许多有益作用也是如此。但是，对婴儿的关系和与动物的互动以及这种经历如何促进发展知之甚少。例如，尚不清楚父母如何鼓励或屏蔽婴儿与伴侣动物的相互作用，以及与动物的互动是否有助于婴儿迅速发展的心理功能。因此，完全了解人动物相互作用以及这种相互作用如何影响发展，需要表征婴儿与伴侣动物的经历。表征婴儿的互动和与动物的关系也很重要，因为婴儿的发育是由他们的经验塑造的 - 他们学习了他们所听到的语言，他们所看的面孔的种类以及与环境中各种物体的互动。此外，经验的差异可能会对健康发展产生深远的影响。在机构，贫困或没有关怀的护理人员中成长的孩子的发展结果与在其他条件下成长的孩子不同。儿童之间的一个共同区别是宠物在家中存在。检查婴儿对宠物的经历的变化，以及这些变化如何有助于他们对动物的发展认知，为系统地研究环境对婴儿发育的影响以及提供了有关婴儿与伴侣动物经验的质量和数量的众多信息。 尽管已经研究了婴儿对动物刺激的看法和学习数十年，但几乎没有尝试将这种学习与他们在宠物中的经验联系起来 家。这些先前的研究为婴儿对动物的基本看法提供了深刻的了解，表明在3至4个月的情况下，婴儿具有复杂的能力来区分，记住，对各种动物进行分类。最近，婴儿在家庭中对宠物的经验被认为是这一早期发展的潜在贡献者。 该项目将通过与父母的访谈（实验1），对问卷的父母回答（实验2）以及家庭中的观察（实验3），提供表征婴儿与动物相互作用的质量和数量的详细信息（实验1）。通过评估在动物存在下，在日常活动中有不同经验的婴儿自然主义场景如何在婴儿相互作用中差异的影响（实验4）。这些实验的结果将增加我们对整个生命周期中人类相互作用的理解，并开始揭示与伴侣动物的关系有助于婴儿发育的方式。 公共卫生的相关性：人类与动物的互动可以对儿童和成人的心理功能产生深远的影响，但是我们对年轻婴儿与动物的相互作用的种类知之甚少，或这种相互作用对婴儿发育的影响。早期经验的极端差异会导致发展结果的差异。因此，有可能与没有宠物的婴儿不同的宠物或被鼓励与伴侣动物建立关系的婴儿有可能。因此，了解婴儿的宠物经历的变化，以及这种变化如何促进婴儿发展对动物的认知，这对于理解经验在广泛地了解婴儿发育的作用以及了解与伴侣动物的经验特别影响典型发展非常重要。从该项目中获得的知识对于制定干预措施可能很重要，以帮助提供可以促进健康发展的批判经验。