认知灵活性的发展神经机制研究

Cognitive flexibility is an important characteristic of the human mind, which is the basic premise of adaption and effective learning. Recently, many researchers explored the cognitive mechanism of cognitive flexibility as one of the main components of executive function. It has been found that cognitive flexibility is matured in teenager, and cognitive flexibility is correlated with the infant’s frontal EEG baseline strength and the connection strength of juvenile’s brain network related cognitive control. But the neural developmental mechanism of cognitive flexibility in childhood remains unclear, and it is unanswered how the children with different cognitive flexibility use different external feedback information to adjust their learning behavior. This project was proposed on the basis of previous studies, which utilized the classic paradigm of cognitive flexibility—Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST), and aimed to advance a unified paradigm to explore the 3-12 years old children's development of cognitive flexibility, and reveal the neural basis of rapid development of cognitive flexibility among children. In addition, we planned to compare the behavioral and neural difference between children with different cognitive flexibility when they make different types of errors. The findings from these studies would shed a light to further reveal the neural basis of intellectual development, provide theoretical guidance for educators to make different teaching plan, and can offer helps for the diagnosis and treatment of brain-damaged patients, mental patients, ADHD and children with other developmental problems.

认知灵活性是人类思维的重要特征，是适应环境、高效学习的基本前提。近年来，众多研究者将认知灵活性作为执行功能的主要成份开展了大量研究，发现认知灵活性成熟于青少年时期，认知灵活性高低与婴儿期的额叶脑电基线强度和少年期负责认知控制的脑网络连接强度相关。但认知灵活性在儿童期快速发展的神经机制却并不清楚，尚无准确评价个体认知灵活性高低的神经科学指标。为探索这些问题，本项目拟对认知灵活性的经典范式―威斯康星卡片分类测验（WCST）进行改进，克服已有范式分段测量导致结论不一致的问题，考察3–12岁儿童认知灵活性的发展规律，揭示认知灵活性快速发展的神经基础，探索认知灵活性的个体差异关联的脑电成分、脑网络连接模式。本项目研究成果可为进一步揭示智力发展及其神经基础提供新视角，为教育者制定差异化的教学方案提供理论指导，也可给脑损伤病人、精神病人、多动症儿童和其他认知发展障碍儿童的诊断和治疗提供帮助。

本项目以5-12岁儿童以及18岁以上的成人为对象，考察认知灵活性的发展规律与快速发展的神经基础，并探讨认知不灵活的内在原因与脑机制。主要通过三个研究方案开展研究。（1）研究了5-12岁儿童认知灵活性。我们开发了测量学前与学龄儿童的认知灵活性工具TCT（target choose task）任务。考察了东北，西南，中部三个地区总共500多名5-12岁儿童的认知灵活性，探讨其发展规律。并随机抽取成人19人（平均年龄21.74岁）和儿童23人（平均年龄8.8岁），考察了儿童与成人在TCT任务中对不同性质的反馈信息的加工过程及其神经机制。（2）研究了认知灵活性相关神经机制。我们考察了三种不同的抑制能力在神经机制上的异同。采用经典的“线索-目标”任务转换范式，探究不同层级结构之间任务转换的加工机制。另外，使用了表征嵌套范式研究了不同类型任务之间的不对称切换成本，以及电生理特征。（3）考察了人们在社会认知领域如何灵活改变反应模式。本项目的相关研究结果已经在《Neuropsychologia》、《Biological psychology》等刊物上总共发表了17篇相关的学术论文，其中13篇为SCI或SSCI论文。申请了1项软件著作权。