Development itself is the key to understanding developmental disorders
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.
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Our results are consistent with neuroconstructivist approach to development and suggest that early brain and behavioral development in infants who go on to develop ASD is dynamic, and risk markers may change rapidly over the course of early development.
“Our results are also consistent with neuroconstructivist approach to development [48, 74] and suggest that early brain and behavioral development in infants who go on to develop ASD is dynamic, and risk markers may change rapidly over the course of early development [21].”
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- 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
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