Cognitive flexibility across development: new insights from advanced imaging technologies

The overall aim of the project is to use newly developed optical imaging methods to non-invasively assess the neural determinants of cognitive flexibility in early infancy and across the typical developmental pathway. Cognitive flexibility is a construct that emerges during early development and is known to be important for human flourishing. However, we know little about the cognitive or neural basis of this ability in early life. This is largely because of limitations in currently available methods to study neural processing and cognitive function in infancy. This project will bridge across infant cognitive neuroscience and the development of new optical imaging methods (high density diffuse optimal tomography - HD-DOT) to assess the neural underpinnings of cognitive flexibility non-invasively. The project will also investigate how cognitive flexibility in early life predicts later cognitive function at follow-up sessions, and also cross-sectionally across different age groups.

There are four key objectives:
Objective 1: Index the neural determinants of cognitive flexibility in infancy.
Objective 2: Assessment of antecedents (socioeconomic status, parental health/diet, infant sleep quality, social attachment) that predict cognitive flexibility.
Objective 3: Determine whether early cognitive flexibility performance correlates with cognitive abilities at later follow-up sessions.
Objective 4: Compare cognitive flexibility across different age ranges from early life onwards.