There are several studies currently being conducted by our laboratory:
Associative Learning and Socio-Emotional Development
Little is understood about the origins of social behavior and even less is known about why infants and children vary in their social behavior. Contingency detection plays a key role in social development. This study examines individual differences in infants’ early associative learning (i.e., contingency detection) by determining whether heterogeneity in basic learning processes (e.g., classical and operant conditioning) relates to performance on social behavioral as well as neural tasks. Through the use of both typically developing infants and children and atypical or high risk populations (e.g., children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), infant siblings or children with ASD), we hope to understand the mechanisms underlying heterogeneity in social behavior.
Neural Correlates of Attention Bias Modification in Children and Adolescents with Anxiety
Hypervigilance and excessive attention to threatening stimuli in the environment is thought to contribute to the etiology of anxiety disorders. In collaboration with Drs. Jeremy Pettit at FIU and Wendy Silverman at Yale, we are examining potential changes that may occur in the brain in response to a novel behavioral treatment procedure, Attention Bias Modification Training (ABMT), in children and adolescents with anxiety. Examination of the neural correlates pre- and post-attention bias training in a developing population may further our understanding of the underlying neurobiology associated with the development of as well as the alleviation of anxiety disorders.
Neural Correlates of Motor Experience in Early Infancy
Infants’ motor skills develop rapidly over the course of the first year of life. At approximately 3 months, infants reach an important motor milestone – reaching and grasping of objects. This new manipulation of objects opens up not only new experiences with objects in their environment, but also new social experiences, as now others are able to interact with the infant with such objects. It has been shown that this grasping behavior can actually occur earlier if infants are given some experience with grasping using a special mitten that helps them pick up objects. However, little is known about how this experience may change regions in the brain associated with both motor and social behavior. This study examines the plasticity of the infant’s brain to having such motor experiences so that we may better understand the underlying neural mechanisms involved in the development of motor behavior and how this may also affect subsequent social development.
Associative Learning and Hippocampal Development in Young Children
The brain develops very rapidly over the first years of life. One region of the brain important for learning and memory and spatial navigation is the hippocampus. The developmental trajectory of the hippocampus is not well characterized. For example, there are differences in memory and spatial navigation performance between 3- and 6-year-old children suggesting differences in hippocampal development. However, the current techniques used to examine underlying neural functioning are not suitable to establish whether these differences are indeed related to hippocampal function. In this study, we use classical eyeblink conditioning as a novel technique to indirectly measure hippocampal function in young children. It is hypothesized that children’s performance at both the individual and group levels on the hippocampally-dependent eyeblink conditioning task will be related to their performance on spatial navigation and memory tasks.