This influential festschrift honours the legacy of Annette Karmiloff-Smith, a seminal thinker in the field of child development and a pioneer in developmental cognitive neuroscience. The current volume brings together many of the researchers, collaborators and students who worked with Professor Karmiloff-Smith to show how her ideas have influenced and continue to influence their own research.
Over four parts, each covering a different phase or domain of Karmiloff-Smith’s research career, leading developmental psychologists in cognition, neuroscience and computer science reflect on her extensive contribution, from her early work with Piaget in Geneva to her innovative research project investigating children with Down syndrome to understand the mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease. The chapters provide a mix of cutting-edge science and reminiscence, providing a fascinating insight into the historical contexts in which many of Annette’s theoretical insights arose, including such ideas as the microgenetic approach, representational redescription and neuroconstructivism. The chapters also provide updates about how earlier theoretical ideas have stood the test of time, and present unpublished data from the early years of Annette’s career.
Taking Development Seriously is essential reading for students and scholars in child development and developmental neuroscience.
Author(s): Michael S. C. Thomas, Denis Mareschal, Victoria Knowland
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 331
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Contributors
1. Annette Karmiloff-Smith: Scientist, mother and friend
Overview of chapters
Part one: Geneva and Beyond Modularity
Part two: Rethinking Innateness
Part three: Neuroconstructivism and developmental disorders
Part four: New avenues
References
2. The cognitive underpinnings of relative clause comprehension in children
The linguistic and cognitive underpinnings of relative clause comprehension
The design of our study in Geneva
The findings and next steps
Evidence for a cognitive bottleneck from coordinate sentences with passive clauses
Support from the subsequent literature on children and adults
The long reach of the relative clause
Note
References
3. On the construction of the developmental problem in Karmiloff-Smith's theory
Annette Karmiloff-Smith's first steps in psychology
Three "seasons" of research at CIEG
A long and difficult path into psycholinguistics
Looking for the processes of development with Inhelder
Goodbye Geneva!
The paradoxical pitfall of Piagetian constructivism
A first approach, formal and "algebraic"
The two psychological attempts of Inhelder
Three ways to reframing Piaget and Inhelder's inquiries
Notes
References
4. Intelligence: Taking the dynamics of development seriously
The origin of Annette's influence on us
Why intelligence?
The empirical regularities in intelligence
Exceptions in development
The case for taking g seriously
A quick sketch of the theory of the Minimal Cognitive Architecture
A radically different interpretation of g
The scope of our research program
A dynamical model of g
Extending the base model
Simulations
Population dataset
Measures
Results
Discussion
Notes
References
5. Being a mentor
References
6. Biological evolution's use of representational redescription
Introduction
Background: Immanuel Kant on mathematical knowledge
Re-representing the precocial-altricial distinction
Meta-configured genome expression
Use of internal languages
Piaget on possibility and necessity
Overlaps
Representational redescription
Numbers
Evolution's use of representational redescription
Conclusion
Notes
References
7. Revisiting Rethinking Innateness: 20 years on
Rethinking Innateness: Origins
Rethinking Innateness: Impact
Rethinking Innateness: The brain
Rethinking Innateness: Acknowledged limitations
Conclusion
References
8. Representational redescription: The case of the early mental lexicon
Introduction
Lexical-semantic development
Phono-lexical development
Inhibition and reorganisation
Phonological inhibition
Semantic inhibition
Mechanisms of inhibition
Conclusion
Note
References
9. Representational redescription: An appreciation of one of Annette Karmiloff-Smith's key contributions to developmental science
Bibliography
10. Prospective and longitudinal studies of the earliest origins of language learning impairments: Annette Karmiloff-Smith's ongoing legacy
Prospective longitudinal studies
Origins of language learning impairments
Computational modelling approaches
The ongoing legacy of A K-S
References
11. Rethinking the attention homunculus through atypical development
Probing the domain-generality of semantic distance effects via atypical cognition
Beyond the attention homunculus: Theory of development, outcomes and mechanisms
Concluding thoughts on moving beyond the attention homunculus: Where next?
Acknowledgements
References
12. What has changed in 18 years? Reflections on Ansari & Karmiloff-Smith (2002)
Introduction
Outstanding questions from Ansari & Karmiloff-Smith (2002):
Do analog and symbolic systems of number develop independently or become progressively integrated or separated over developmental time?
What developmental changes explain why young children do not have a full grasp of the meaning of counting, despite the surprising numerical abilities of preverbal infants?
What factors explain the co-morbidity of dyslexia and dyscalculia? Are common brain/cognitive systems affected, are both particularly vulnerable to atypical development or is number even more at risk than reading?
In children with dyscalculia, are their other abilities really normal or can we detect subtle representational impairments?
Which aspects of numeracy deficits in genetic disorders are due to syndrome-specific causes and which to syndrome-general impairments?
Concluding thoughts
References
13. Quo vadis modularity in the 2020s?
Modularity as an advantageous a priori design principle
Modularity as a data-driven description of brain structure and function
Final thoughts
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
14. What can neurodevelopmental disorders tell us about developmental pathways? Realising Neuroconstructivist principles now and in the future
Annette as a mentor, a collaborator and a friend
Visuospatial cognition
Static versus dynamic approaches to neurodevelopmental disorders
The future of the dynamic approach to neurodevelopmental disorders.
Cross-domain associations
The future of cross-domain associations
Associations can be as informative as dissociations
The future of associations and dissociations
Cross-syndrome comparison
The future of cross-syndrome comparison
Individual differences
The future of individual differences
Realising neuroconstructivist principles and reproducible research
References
15. Age matters
Annette, neuroconstructivism and me - a personal note
Background
Longitudinal study of early language in children with Williams syndrome and children with Down syndrome
Disorders of developmental timing
Age-related effects in gene expression and neurobiological processes in typical and atypical populations
Age-related effects and covariant developmental changes seen in imaging studies of typical and atypical populations
Behavioural studies reporting dependency relations between language and arithmetic, and the long-term impact of developmental language delay
Final remarks
References
16. Aligning cognitive studies in mouse models and human infants/toddlers: The case of Down syndrome
Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith and LonDownS: Aligning mouse and human phenotyping
How can mouse models deepen our understanding of neurodevelopmental disorders?
Genetic and physiological alignment
Cognitive and behavioural phenotyping alignment
Focus on Down syndrome
Mouse models of Down syndrome
Memory phenotyping of Tc1 mouse
Building analogues of mouse memory tasks for infants/toddlers with Down syndrome
Measure of exploration
Stimuli
Number of trials and timing
LonDownS memory task design for human infants/toddlers with Down syndrome
Participants
Equipment
Results
Novel object recognition task
Object-in-place memory task
Summary
Improving alignment between mouse and human studies in the current study
More tasks, more delayed timepoints, and converging evidence
Re-centering infant/toddler attention and the use of a mask between trials
Number and positioning of stimuli
Analogous developmental stages across species
Future focus: Understanding individual differences in mouse models and humans
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
17. Sleep to remember: Typical and atypical sleep and constraints on representational development
Theories of sleep and memory
Sleep as a constraint on representational development
A developmental approach to sleep's role
Sleep in developmental disorders: Annette Karmiloff-Smith's influence
Summary, conclusions, and directions for future research and theory
Does sleep have a developmental trajectory?
Does sleep modify neural and cognitive representations?
Additional theoretical implications
Acknowledgement
References
18. The debate on screen time: An empirical case study in infant-directed video
When and what can infants learn from video?
Empirical case study in I-DTV: Methods
Participants
Stimuli
Procedure
Results
Interest in the videos
Looking at number
Gaze similarity
Measuring gaze similarity
Quantifying flicker entropy
Identifying faces
Comparing gaze similarity as function of scene composition across both videos
Gaze similarity as function of flicker entropy and faces
Video C
Video SI
Discussion
Conclusions and legacy
Notes
References
19. Never missing the whole picture: Intellectual development from a neuroconstructivist perspective
Introduction
Intelligence as a dynamic construct
Putting neuroconstructivism at the disposal of intellectual development
Probabilistic epigenesis
Neural constructivism
Interactive specialization
Embodiment (perceiving and acting)
Ensocialment
Toward an integrated framework
Concluding remarks
Note
References
20. Translation of scientific insights into better nappies and consumer education for healthy infant development and better sleep
Understanding babies' development
"See the World through Babies' Eyes" - An advertising campaign which celebrated babies' development"
Better nappies through insights about babies' development combined with innovative technology
Educating the public about the importance of sleep for babies' development
Understanding the connection between sleep, babies' development and nappies
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
