Cited by 1,299Williams Syndrome ResearchLanguage Development and DisordersChild and Animal Learning Development

Development itself is the key to understanding developmental disorders

Karmiloff-Smith, Annette·1998·Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Abstract

It is a truism that development involves contributions from both genes and environment, but theories differ with respect to the roles they attribute to each, which deeply affects the ways in which developmental disorders are researched. The strict nativist approach to abnormal phenotypes, inspired by adult neuropsychology and evolutionary psychology, seeks to identify impairments to domain-specific cognitive modules and studies the purported juxtaposition of impaired and intact abilities. The neuroconstructivist approach differs in several respects: (i) it seeks more indirect, lower-level causes of abnormality than impaired cognitive modules; (ii)modules are thought to emerge from a developmental process of modularization; (iii) unlike empiricism, neuroconstructivism accepts some form of innately specified starting points, but unlike nativism, these are considered to be initially `domain-relevant', only becoming domain-specific with the process of development and specific environmental interactions; and (iv) different cognitive disorders are considered to lie on a continuum rather than to be truly specific. These alternative theoretical positions are briefly considered as they apply to Specific Language Impairment, and followed by a more detailed case study of a well-defined neurodevelopmental disorder, Williams syndrome. It is argued that development itself plays a crucial role in phenotypical outcomes.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/s1364-6613(98)01230-3

Cites

2 of 2 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Karmiloff-Smith, A.
Venue
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
1998-10
Volume
2
Issue
10
Pages
389-398
ISSN
1364-6613 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W1975418600
Cited by
1,299
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 29 · 2025: 25 · 2024: 57 · 2023: 58 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 36 · 2020: 83 · 2019: 38 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 41 · 2016: 46 · 2015: 48 · 2014: 53 · 2013: 49 · 2012: 74
FWCI
1.56
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Trends in Cognitive Sciences (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Developmental Neuroscience › Williams Syndrome Research
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
Keywords
developmental disorders, nativism, neuroconstructivism, gene-environment interaction, modularization, specific language impairment, Williams syndrome, neurodevelopmental disorders, developmental processes

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review