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Cited by 352

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 138 of the 138 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The role of immaturity in human development.

Bjorklund, David F.·1997·Psychological Bulletin

Abstract

The possibility that infants' and young children's immature behaviors and cognitions are sometimes adaptive is explored and interpreted in terms of evolutionary theory. It is argued that developmental immaturity had an adaptive role in evolution and continues to have an adaptive role in human development. The role of developmental retardation in human evolution is discussed, followed by an examination of the relation between humans' extended childhood and brain plasticity. Behavioral neoteny, as exemplified by play, is examined, as are some potentially adaptive aspects of infants' perception and cognition that limit the amount of information they can process. Aspects of immature cognition during early childhood that may have some contemporaneous adaptive value are also discussed. It is proposed that viewing immaturity as sometimes adaptive to the developing child alters how children and their development are viewed.

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Crossref · 10.1037/0033-2909.122.2.153

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Metadata

Authors
Bjorklund, D. F.
Venue
Psychological Bulletin
Published
1997
Volume
122
Issue
2
Pages
153-169
ISSN
  • 0033-2909 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-1455
OpenAlex
W1987600988
Cited by
352
References
138
FWCI
13.45
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The role of immaturity in human development. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037/0033-2909.122.2.153
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Bjorklund, D. F. (1997). The role of immaturity in human development. Psychological Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.122.2.153

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.