Editorial TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol.9 No.
3 March 2005
Cognitive development: at the crossroads?
Mark H. Johnson1 and Yuko Munakata2
1
Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, School of Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London, London WC1E 7JL, UK
2
Department of Psychology, 345 UCB, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0345, USA
In the words of the old Robert Johnson blues song ‘I went about the developing mind from non-verbal behavioural
to the crossroads (mama), I looked east and west’. The field measures alone. Although behavioural methods will
of cognitive development, which traces it roots back to continue to remain important, more direct measures of
Jean Piaget and earlier, faces a choice. On the one hand, brain function can now be obtained without any response
powerful new approaches from genetics, functional imag- being required from the participant, a major advantage in
ing, developmental psychopathology and computational young children. More interestingly, neuroimaging offers
modelling, offer a tempting future pathway. On the other the potential to explore questions such as whether the
hand, some believe these new possibilities are a mirage, same behaviour in infants and adults is mediated by the
and that we should not be distracted from describing same patterns of cortical activation? Connectionist and
human developmental change at the cognitive level based neural-network models provide tools that can be used to
on behavioural experiments. formalize and assess theories of developmental change.
In the 1970s and 80s cognitive psychology began to These models can have different degrees of neural
permeate the older field of child psychology resulting in a plausibility and can instantiate a variety of theoretical
subdiscipline of cognitive development. Although this thrust perspectives on the extent and nature of environmental
had many successes and greatly advanced our under- influence.
standing in certain domains, a less positive outcome was Although the newly emerging field of developmental
that it focussed researchers on describing steady states at cognitive neuroscience, and its associated technology, has
different ages rather than focussing on processes of change generated much excitement, there are also sceptics who
[1]. A number of recent advances have lead to renewed fear that it will not advance progress on the key issues
attention on understanding mechanisms of developmental that have dominated developmental psychology for
change. One advance is research on the types of learning decades. The ability to collect rich and complex data sets
mechanisms that drive developmental change, often from the typical and atypical developing brain of the
implemented and tested in computational models. A second infant and child does not in itself guarantee that the
is an investigation of the types of changes in mental repre- crucial experiments for testing theories of developmental
sentations that occur during development (see Johnson & change will be conducted. Limitations and constraints
Munakata, this issue). A third advance comes in the form of imposed by the available neuroimaging and compu-
new methods of investigation, arising from the recent tational methods could bias experimenters towards par-
convergence between developmental psychology and cogni- ticular theoretical perspectives. For example, the ability to
tive neuroscience – ‘developmental cognitive neuroscience’ image and localize brain function in children could
[2,3]. In developmental cognitive neuroscience, efforts are encourage a view of mental development in terms of the
being made to use mechanisms of neural development and addition of static computational modules. Similarly,
plasticity as inspiration for cognitive-level models of connectionist network modelling has not usually been
development. Neuroimaging tools are generating surprising used to explore nativist accounts of development.
observations about development that force re-thinking of The agenda of this special issue, which grew out of a
prevailing views (see Casey, Tottenham, Liston & Durston; recent meeting (The XXIst Meeting of the International
Posner & Rothbart; Aslin & Fiser). Connectionist and Association for the Study of Attention and Performance,
neural-network models provide tools for the exploration of Processes of Change in Brain and Cognitive Development,
different theories about the extent and nature of plasticity 26 July–1 August, 2004 in Winter Park, Colorado) is to
during development (Elman). Studies that compare typical assess how evidence from cognitive neuroscience has
and atypical developmental trajectories allow us to examine contributed to the current state of knowledge about
the scope and limits of plasticity (Scerif & Karmiloff-Smith, processes of change during human mental development,
Stiles et al., Maurer, Lewis & Mondloch). Comparisons with and to discuss the ways in which these techniques and
other species allow us to assess the development of cognitive tools can be harnessed to address the fundamental
abilities in the absence of language (Gómez). questions of cognitive development.
There is great potential for these recent advances to
inform theories of cognitive development. For example, References
the advent of child-friendly functional imaging offers a 1 Siegler, R.S. (2000) The rebirth of children’s learning. Child Dev. 71,
number of advantages to the field. At a purely practical 26–35
2 Johnson, M.H. (2005) Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience: An
level, there are enormous difficulties in making inferences
Introduction, 2nd Edn, Blackwell
Corresponding authors: Johnson, M.H. ([email protected]), 3 Munakata, Y., Casey, B.J. and Diamond, A. (2004) Developmental
Munakata, Y. ([email protected]). cognitive neuroscience: progress and potential. Trends Cogn. Sci. 8,
122–128
www.sciencedirect.com 1364-6613/$ - see front matter Q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.01.010
