PSYn5281 Current developmental frameworks
Autumn 2023
Lecturer: Dr Hana D’Souza,
Cardiff University, UK
Profile: https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/dsouzah
Timetable
·
Saturday
16 December 2023 - room P24b
o 10am–12 noon: Lecture 1 + Discussion 1
o 1pm–3pm: Lecture 2 + Discussion 2
o 3.30pm–5.30pm: Lecture 3 + Discussion 3
·
Sunday
17 December 2023 -
o 10am-12 noon: Lecture 4 + Discussion 4
Lecture
1: Models of development
How does a tiny sac
of molecules and watery fluid become an adult human with intelligence, skills,
emotions, drives, desires, and personality? Since time immemorial, this
question has been posed as a dichotomy between nature and nurture – attempting
to draw a line between what is innate and what is shaped by experience. We now
understand that this dichotomy is false: there is no nature without nurture and
no nurture without nature. In this lecture, we will move beyond the
nature-nurture debate. Dr D’Souza will introduce some of the current
theoretical frameworks which can be applied to study development, including
developmental systems, dynamic systems, and neuroconstructivism. We will
discuss how development is a dynamic and interactive process that occurs on
many different levels (e.g., genetic, neural, cognitive, behavioural,
societal). In order to understand both typical and atypical outcomes, we need
to embrace development in its complexity and across time. One potential
visualisation framework which can guide this process is the Accessible
Cause-Outcome Representation and Notation System (ACORNS). This framework can
help us to map and model developmental sequences, and thus represent how
diverse factors interact, how functions change over time, and the absolute and
relative nature of causal outcomes. ACORNS is a useful framework that will be
applied across upcoming lectures and could be utilized across the paper more
broadly.
Lecture
2: The brain
Building on the ACORNS framework introduced in
Lecture 1, Dr D’Souza will focus on brain development in this lecture. The
human brain is energetically expensive and its development is time consuming.
When we compare brains across species, we find a dramatic expansion of cerebral
cortex in primates, which points to a particularly prolonged timetable for
development. What could this extra plasticity be useful for? We will examine
human brain development with a focus on pruning and its role in gray and white
matter changes. We will discuss the importance of understanding typical and
atypical brain development as an adaptive process of tuning and shaping
neurocircuitry in interaction with environment, rather than maturation of distinct
brain areas.
Lecture
3: Genes & environment
Following on from
Lecture 2, we will focus on the role of genes in development. We will emphasize
that there is no direct gene-to-brain mapping. Rather, gene sequences are
translated into proteins and these proteins enter complex interactive
signalling cascades. We will illustrate the complexity of this process by using
the example of a single gene disorder, fragile X syndrome (FXS). Building on the
previous lectures, and emphasizing the need to move beyond the false
nature-nurture dichotomy, we will highlight the importance of examining interactions
between genes and environment. We will emphasize that development is an
adaptive process and discuss how some seemingly negative outcomes may in fact
be adaptations. To illustrate this, we will consider some of the developmental
outcomes of children who grew up in a deprived environment in the context of
sensitive periods and gene-environment interaction. We will also discuss the
possibility of re-opening sensitive periods.
Lecture
4: The importance of understanding
individual differences at genetic, neural, cognitive and environmental levels:
the case of Down syndrome
This lecture will focus on the importance of understanding individual
differences across the levels introduced in the ACORNS framework, focusing on
the most common known genetic cause of intellectual disability – Down syndrome
(DS). This neurodevelopmental disorder is often diagnosed pre- or perinatally,
which provides us with a window into early developmental processes – an
opportunity to understand the DS phenotype as it emerges. Dr D’Souza will first
summarise assumptions about DS that are commonly found in the literature. This
neurodevelopmental syndrome is characterised by a distinctive physical and
cognitive phenotype including relative strengths and weaknesses. However, the
phenotype of individuals with DS is far from homogeneous, and a wide range of
individual differences is present at every level of description. On the genetic
level, the trisomy can occur through different mechanisms at distinct
developmental time points, and the expression of trisomy 21 may be modulated by
different genes across individuals. On the level of the brain, individual
differences in brain structure and/or function correlate with variation in
cognition and behaviour, including communication skills. Large individual differences
can also be observed on the cognitive level. For example, while some toddlers
with DS are nonverbal, others acquire an expressive vocabulary level close to
those of typically developing children. Furthermore, individual differences on
the environmental level need to be considered. Here we will specifically highlight
the importance of family context and the role it plays in early development in
DS, as well as its cascading effects on later developmental outcomes in
individuals with DS. We will discuss how the ACORNS framework has been applied
to early social and cognitive development in DS and how it is currently being
expanded upon.
Reading list
*Key
references / reviews
Lecture
1
D’Souza, H., & Karmiloff‐Smith, A. (2017).
Neurodevelopmental disorders. Wiley Interdisciplinary
Reviews:
Cognitive Science, 8(1-2), e1398.
This primer compares two theoretical
approaches to understanding
neurodevelopmental disorders: the
neuropsychological account and neuroconstructivism.
Gottlieb, G. (2007). Probabilistic epigenesis.
Developmental Science, 10(1), 1-11.
This paper explains probabilistic
epigenesis.
Johnson, M.H. (2011). Interactive
specialization: A domain-general framework for human
functional
brain development? Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 1, 7-21.
This paper explains interactive specialization.
*Karmiloff-Smith, A.
(1998). Development itself is the key to understanding developmental
disorders. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(10),
389-398.
This paper emphasizes the importance of
studying development in order to understand phenotypical outcomes.
*Moore, D. G., &
George, R. (2011). ACORNS: a tool for the visualisation and modelling of
atypical development. Journal of
Intellectual Disability Research, 55(10), 956-972.
This paper
presents the Accessible Cause-Outcome Representation and Notation System
(ACORNS) – a tool that provides more precise accounts of development while also
being accessible, intuitive and visually appealing.
Oyama, S. (2001)
What is developmental systems theory? In S. Oyama, P. E. Griffiths & R. D.
Gray (Eds.), Cycles of contingency: Developmental
systems and evolution (pp. 1-12). MIT Press.
This paper
explains developmental systems theory.
Smith, L. B., & Thelen, E. (2003).
Development as a dynamic system. Trends in Cognitive
Sciences,
7(8), 343-348.
This paper
explains dynamic systems theory.
Spencer, J. P.,
Blumberg, M. S., McMurray, B., Robinson, S. R., Samuelson, L. K., &
Tomblin, J.
B. (2009). Short arms and talking eggs: Why we
should no longer abide the nativist-
empiricist debate. Child Development Perspectives,
3(2), 79–87.
This developmental
systems paper emphasizes the importance of moving beyond the nature-nurture
debate.
Westermann, G.,
Mareschal, D., Johnson, M. H., Sirois, S., Spratling, M. W., & Thomas, M.
S.
C. (2007). Neuroconstructivism. Developmental
Science, 10(1), 75–83.
This paper
explains neuroconstructivism.
Lecture
2 & 3
Callaghan,
B. L., & Tottenham, N. (2016). The neuro-environmental loop of plasticity:
a
cross-species analysis of parental effects on emotion
circuitry development following typical and adverse caregiving. Neuropsychopharmacology, 41(1),
163-176.
This review
examines how early parental care, the central nervous system, and behaviour
come together to form a neuro-environmental loop, contributing to the formation
of stable emotion regulation circuits.
*Chapter 3 (From
Gene to Brain) & Chapter 4 (Building
a Brain) in Johnson, M. H.,
& de
Haan, M. (2015). Developmental Cognitive
Neuroscience (4th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
Chapter 3 (From
Gene to Brain) introduces developmental genetics and outlines contemporary
views on the role and structure of genes in building brains and the cognitive
processes that they support. Chapter 4 (Building a Brain) focuses on
pre- and postnatal brain development.
Gao, W., Grewen, K.,
Knickmeyer, R. C., Qiu, A., Salzwedel, A., Lin, W., & Gilmore, J. H.
(2019).
A review on neuroimaging studies of genetic and environmental
influences on early brain development. NeuroImage, 185,
802-812.
This is a
recent review of neuroimaging studies of genetic and environmental influences
on early brain development.
Ghazanfar, A. A.
(2019). Phylogeny and ontogeny in human neuroscience. In W. Singer,
T. J. Sejnowski, & P. Rakic (Eds.), The
neocortex (pp. 311-320). The MIT Press.
This chapter
argues that understanding the evolution of the human brain requires a comparative
understanding of how it develops and operates in concert with the body.
Gilmore, J. H.,
Knickmeyer, R. C., & Gao, W. (2018). Imaging structural and functional
brain
development in early childhood. Nature
Reviews Neuroscience, 19(3), 123.
This is a recent
review of neuroimaging studies focused on structural and functional brain
development in early childhood.
Hensch,
T. (2016). Critical ingredients for brain development. Scientific American,
February,
66-69.
This is an easy
to read article introducing the concept of critical periods and the possibility
of reopening them.
Lickliter, R., &
Witherington, D. C. (2017). Towards a truly developmental epigenetics.
Human Development, 60(2-3), 124-138.
This paper argues
that transcending the worn and outdated nature-nurture controversy will require
a truly developmental epigenetics that embraces the importance of
emergence, context, and hierarchical relations in all developmental explanations.
Snell-Rood, E.,
& Snell-Rood, C. (2020). The developmental support hypothesis: adaptive
plasticity
in neural development in response to cues of social
support. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1803),
20190491.
Across mammals,
cues of developmental support, such as touching, licking or attentiveness,
stimulate neural development, behavioural exploration and even overall body
growth. Why should such fitness-related traits be so sensitive to developmental
conditions? This paper reviews the developmental support hypothesis, a
potential adaptive explanation of this plasticity.
Stiles, J. (2017).
Principles of brain development. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews:
Cognitive
Science, 8(1-2).
This primer introduces
contemporary views on inheritance and brain development.
Watamura, S. E.,
& Roth, T. L. (2019). Looking back and moving forward: Evaluating and
advancing translation from animal models to human
studies of early life stress and DNA methylation. Developmental
Psychobiology, 61(3), 323-340.
To promote
cross-species dialog and scientific advancement, this paper provides a
classification scheme to systematically evaluate the match between
characteristics of human and animal studies of early life stress and DNA
methylation.
Lecture
4
Antonarakis, S. E., Skotko, B. G., Rafii, M. S., Strydom, A.,
Pape, S. E., Bianchi, D. W., Sherman,
S. L., & Reeves,
R. H. (2020). Down syndrome. Nature Reviews Disease Primers, 6(1),
9.
This is a recent review on Down syndrome.
Cebula, K. R.,
Moore, D. G., & Wishart, J. G. (2010). Social cognition in children with
Down’s
syndrome: challenges to research and theory
building. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 54(2),
113-134.
This annotation is an example of application of ACORNS,
focusing on the development of
social cognition in children with Down syndrome.
Daunhauer, L. A.,
Schworer, E., & Howshar, M. (2017). Parenting matters: Parent–child
interactions in Down syndrome and recommendations
for future research. In International Review of Research in
Developmental Disabilities (Vol. 53, pp. 1-43). Academic Press.
This is a
review of research on parent-child interaction in Down syndrome.
D’Souza, D.,
D’Souza, H., & Karmiloff‐Smith, A. (2017).
Precursors to language development
in typically and atypically developing infants and
toddlers: the importance of embracing complexity. Journal of Child Language,
44(03), 591–627.
This paper describes
a number of factors that constrain early typical and atypical language
development. It emphasizes the need for embracing complexity, which involves
integrating data from different domains and levels of description across
developmental time.
*D’Souza, H., & D’Souza, D.
(2023). The emerging phenotype in infants with Down syndrome:
Adaptations to atypical
constraints. In J. Burack, J. Edgin, & L. Abbeduto (Eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Down Syndrome and Development. Oxford University Press.
Accessible here: https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/babylab/embodied-attention-learning/summaries-our-research-parents-and-practitioners-embodied
This book
chapter explores the emerging phenotype of infants with Down syndrome as
adaptations to atypical constraints.
*Karmiloff-Smith, A., Al-Janabi, T., D’Souza,
H., Groet, J., Massand, E., Mok, K., ... &
Tybulewicz, V. (2016). The importance of
understanding individual differences in Down syndrome. F1000Research, 5.
This article
explains the importance of studying individual differences in trisomy 21 across
levels (genetic, cellular, neural, cognitive, behavioural, and environmental).
Sheets, K. B.,
Crissman, B. G., Feist, C. D., Sell, S. L., Johnson, L. R., Donahue, K. C., ...
&
Brasington, C. K. (2011). Practice guidelines for
communicating a prenatal or postnatal diagnosis of Down syndrome:
recommendations of the national society of genetic counselors. Journal
of Genetic Counseling, 20(5), 432-441.
This paper
presents practice guidelines for communicating a prenatal or postnatal
diagnosis of Down syndrome.