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Child Development and the Brain: An Introduction
This accessibly written textbook explores how our increasing knowledge of neuroscience and advances in methods of investigation is changing our understanding of child development. Packed full of images, case studies, reflection points, further reading suggestions and a full glossary of technical terms, it examines key aspects of development such as emotion, memory, learning, perception and language, as well as neurodevelopmental disorders. It is designed to introduce undergraduate students on social science courses to the science behind the brain, looking at how it is structured and how it develops from a tiny cluster of cells into a complex dynamic structure that controls every aspect of our very existence.
256 pages, Paperback
First published August 15, 2015
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June 21, 2022
Wonderful textbook! Just like the description says, it's very accessible. Each section clearly and concisely mapped out what we know about the brain's role in various childhood cognitive developments, basic neuroanatomy, what research has shown, what further research is needed, and where there is debate. The chapter on language alone was worth the read. It ended with a look to the future need for research to better understand the neuroscience behind emotions, perfect for the next book on my list: How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Barret (who's work was cited several places in this textbook)!
Each section had nice summary bullets at the end, which I will certainly want to review a few times. Here they are:
(1) Beginnings and basics
• The brain is divided into two symmetrical hemispheres. Although it was once thought that these two halves were functionally different, it is now thought that most of what we do involves both sides of the brain.
• The brain can be visually divided into four lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital.
• The subcortical brain contains both the brain stem and a number of other parts of the brain that are usually associated with controlling unconscious aspects of human behaviour.
• The brain contains neurons, which fire electrical signals called action potentials, and glial cells, which perform other functions such as repair and maintenance.
• What the mother puts into her body is likely to affect the development of the growing baby in the womb.
• Neuroimaging is slowly allowing us to study the developing brain, although there are still considerable problems in imaging the brains of children.
(2) Developing visual perception and the brain
• A range of methods based on infant gazing have been developed to examine the development of visual perception.
• Preferential looking and habituation paradigms have been used in isolation and in combination to examine how infants discriminate between new and familiar objects.
• We are beginning to understand the need for converging evidence from behavioural and neuroscientific approaches in order to appreciate the coordination of systems involved in visual perception in infancy.
• Object invariance processing reveals different ages of onset in infancy, depending on whether infants are required to simply look at objects or are also required to reach for objects.
• The ventral and dorsal pathways are thought to be responsible for different kinds of object information. Neural activity in the left frontal and temporal areas has been identified, and young infants do perceive object invariance as young as three weeks, using perception of the Kanizsa stimulus.
• Infants' visual acuity increases rapidly during the first six months of life. They are increasingly able to perceive depth, with the help of the binocular and the motion parallax.
• The core areas responsible for visual processing appear to be the same in infants as in adults, although in a significantly less developed state.
• There is mounting evidence that face perception and processing is mediated by different structures than those responsible for perceiving and processing other kinds of objects.
• Young infants are well equipped to perceive the visual world. They can attune focus in the early weeks of life, detect shapes, contrasting contours, colour and depth.
• They can recognise objects and social stimuli such as faces. New methods have helped us to reconceptualise the ways children process visual stimuli and how visual perception relates to fundamental aspects of cognition, such as object permanence.
(3) The development of thinking
• Piaget proposed an influential stage theory of cognitive development. In this he argued that children move through qualitatively different stages of cognition where the ways in which they think operate in a way that is different to that of adults. They develop by means of maturation, and by encountering new and often conflicting information in the environment.
• Piaget proposed that the mind aims for mental equilibrium and achieves this through accommodating and assimilating information. Experimental and theoretical challenges have questioned the rigid, stage-like quality of Piaget's theories.
• In the preoperational phase, young infants tend to reach for objects where they have reached for them, before even when they have seen them moved to a new location. This has been taken as a failure to realise that objects have permanence in real time and space even when they are out of sight.
• This interpretation has been challenged, suggesting that working memory development, rather than an inability to reason about the permanent nature of objects, may account for these experimental findings.
• Neuroscientific studies have shown us how children's executive functioning develops to enable decision-making processes and promote cognitive development.
• The relatively recent study of metacognition has shown us how children's deliberate use of problem-solving strategies can enhance their learning and may in part account for children's progression to operational thought.
• Our understanding of the role and development of working memory throughout middle childhood has been greatly enhanced by modern neuroscientific approaches.
• Influential theories of cognitive development have shown us that children's thinking can sometimes be seen as qualitatively different from the formal operations and abstract logical reasoning that adults tend to exhibit.
• Research into the development of processes related to executive function, such as abilities to adopt metacognitive strategies, inhibit distracting information and reason abstractly, as well as experimental challenges to stage-like theories of development, have given us a more accurate and broader understanding of the ways in which cognitive development can be driven.
• Neuroscientific approaches have given us detailed information about the development and roles of cortical regions that enable changes in types of thought that facilitate higher mental functions, and they highlight how the growth of working-memory capacities allows children to advance their abilities to think about objects and symbols and perform logical cognitive operations.
(4) Emotional development
• Many aspects of emotional development occur as a result of direct interaction between the infant and the immediate environment.
• Knowledge about the brain and emotional development has developed more slowly than other areas of developmental neuroscience.
• There is a great deal of contemporary debate about emotional development and it is hoped that neuroscience will provide answers to many of the outstanding questions.
• The ability to regulate emotions is seen as central to success in a number of different realms.
• The prefrontal cortex plays an essential role in achieving this.
• The idea that emotions are generated by an evolutionary primitive sub-cortex and managed by higher-level functioning in the frontal cortex is one that has influenced ideas about childcare.
• Attachment theory developed in the 1950s and throws a radical light on the way we care for young children.
• Neuroscience has shown us that the baby's brain is undeveloped at birth and that attachment plays a key role in the learning of emotional-relational patterns that form the basis of how we emotionally relate to significant others throughout life.
• Allan Schore's ideas on the development of connections between the right orbitofrontal cortex and areas of the subcortex have been influential, although much yet remains to be firmly established.
• The HPA axis is part of the way the body controls its reaction to stress. We are able to measure only cortisol production in young children and so have access to a complex hormonal system that is, in any case, only partially understood.
• Responsive and sensitive parenting seems to produce a resilience to stress that can be measured in young children by means of measuring cortisol levels in the saliva.
• Children who experience neglect or abuse do not develop the daily cortisol rhythm of healthy children.
• There have been many studies of Eastern European children raised in poor conditions in orphanages whose brains show differences in many areas, as compared to children and adults who have not had these experiences.
• There are many methodological problems with many of these studies.
• The Bucharest Early Intervention Project is beginning to produce results showing changes in a number of brain regions.
(5) Language and literacy
• Empiricist theories of language, such as those of Skinner and Bandura, emphasised that language is something that is acquired through learning. Nativist theories, such as those of Chomsky or Pinker, emphasised that language develops through an innate capacity.
• Social interactionist theories, such as that of Bruner, emphasised an innate capacity, together with a need for human interaction, as being necessary for language to develop.
• We now realise that all of these theories have some validity: imitation, encouragement and interaction as well as an inbuilt predisposition to use language all play their part in the development of language.
• The early work of Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke established that the left temporal region of the brain was important for language processing. While it is now established that there is a preference for left-temporal language processing, other areas of the brain are important for both speaking and listening.
• Brain plasticity allows for children who have suffered damage to the left temporal region to use other areas for language. Early language processing allows infants to recognise and categorise the sounds of the languages they hear spoken around them.
• The ability to hear all the sounds of all the world's languages diminishes after the age of six months.
• Unlike speaking and listening, reading is an unnatural activity and one that many children will need to be explicitly taught. While the exact mechanisms for achieving this remain the subject of considerable debate, the evidence now suggests that we translate the printed word into sound before we begin the process of comprehension.
• The visual word form area (VWFA) is seen as important in the process of reading, particularly decoding.
• Comprehending and thinking about reading involves more areas of the brain than are used in decoding text.
• We are only just beginning to understand which areas of the brain might be implicated in developmental dyslexia. Some studies have focused on the left and right temporoparietal regions; others have suggested areas such as the cerebellum, frontal lobe, caudate and thalamus.
(6) Learning and memory
• There are different systems of memory: implicit and explicit; long-term, intermediate-term and short-term.
• Implicit memory happens automatically and below the level of consciousness. Explicit memory can be consciously and verbally recalled.
• We are only just starting to understand the neurological basis of implicit memory. It is thought to be present from birth. It is the most important form of memory during the first years of life. There is some evidence that subcortical processing is an important aspect of implicit memory.
• Explicit memory develops later, although there is some evidence that babies have a primitive version of explicit memory, called a pre-explicit memory system, that is based in the hippocampus.
• The developing prefrontal cortex allows children to begin to process and take control over some aspects of explicit memory.
• Babies learn through imitation, having a preference for imitating a real human rather than a televised image.
• The mirror neuron system may be part of how such imitative learning is processed in the brain.
• We also learn by processing data from our senses and unconsciously detecting patterns in this data.
• We can also learn to perform new actions by understanding the similarities between one situation and the next, and so learning by analogy.
• Learning makes physical changes to the brain at the neuronal level, strengthening connections between neurons as well as altering the structure of the neurons themselves.
• This ability of the brain to reshape itself is called neural plasticity and it is a quality that the brain has throughout life. Long-term potentiation refers to the way in which synaptic connections alter as a result of experience.
• There is no evidence to support the idea that either children or adults have separate visual, audio and kinaesthetic learning styles.
• There is no evidence to support the idea that the right hemisphere of the brain supports creative thinking, while the left hemisphere is the centre for rational thinking.
• There is no evidence to support the idea that Brain Gym helps to develop the brain.
Each section had nice summary bullets at the end, which I will certainly want to review a few times. Here they are:
(1) Beginnings and basics
• The brain is divided into two symmetrical hemispheres. Although it was once thought that these two halves were functionally different, it is now thought that most of what we do involves both sides of the brain.
• The brain can be visually divided into four lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital.
• The subcortical brain contains both the brain stem and a number of other parts of the brain that are usually associated with controlling unconscious aspects of human behaviour.
• The brain contains neurons, which fire electrical signals called action potentials, and glial cells, which perform other functions such as repair and maintenance.
• What the mother puts into her body is likely to affect the development of the growing baby in the womb.
• Neuroimaging is slowly allowing us to study the developing brain, although there are still considerable problems in imaging the brains of children.
(2) Developing visual perception and the brain
• A range of methods based on infant gazing have been developed to examine the development of visual perception.
• Preferential looking and habituation paradigms have been used in isolation and in combination to examine how infants discriminate between new and familiar objects.
• We are beginning to understand the need for converging evidence from behavioural and neuroscientific approaches in order to appreciate the coordination of systems involved in visual perception in infancy.
• Object invariance processing reveals different ages of onset in infancy, depending on whether infants are required to simply look at objects or are also required to reach for objects.
• The ventral and dorsal pathways are thought to be responsible for different kinds of object information. Neural activity in the left frontal and temporal areas has been identified, and young infants do perceive object invariance as young as three weeks, using perception of the Kanizsa stimulus.
• Infants' visual acuity increases rapidly during the first six months of life. They are increasingly able to perceive depth, with the help of the binocular and the motion parallax.
• The core areas responsible for visual processing appear to be the same in infants as in adults, although in a significantly less developed state.
• There is mounting evidence that face perception and processing is mediated by different structures than those responsible for perceiving and processing other kinds of objects.
• Young infants are well equipped to perceive the visual world. They can attune focus in the early weeks of life, detect shapes, contrasting contours, colour and depth.
• They can recognise objects and social stimuli such as faces. New methods have helped us to reconceptualise the ways children process visual stimuli and how visual perception relates to fundamental aspects of cognition, such as object permanence.
(3) The development of thinking
• Piaget proposed an influential stage theory of cognitive development. In this he argued that children move through qualitatively different stages of cognition where the ways in which they think operate in a way that is different to that of adults. They develop by means of maturation, and by encountering new and often conflicting information in the environment.
• Piaget proposed that the mind aims for mental equilibrium and achieves this through accommodating and assimilating information. Experimental and theoretical challenges have questioned the rigid, stage-like quality of Piaget's theories.
• In the preoperational phase, young infants tend to reach for objects where they have reached for them, before even when they have seen them moved to a new location. This has been taken as a failure to realise that objects have permanence in real time and space even when they are out of sight.
• This interpretation has been challenged, suggesting that working memory development, rather than an inability to reason about the permanent nature of objects, may account for these experimental findings.
• Neuroscientific studies have shown us how children's executive functioning develops to enable decision-making processes and promote cognitive development.
• The relatively recent study of metacognition has shown us how children's deliberate use of problem-solving strategies can enhance their learning and may in part account for children's progression to operational thought.
• Our understanding of the role and development of working memory throughout middle childhood has been greatly enhanced by modern neuroscientific approaches.
• Influential theories of cognitive development have shown us that children's thinking can sometimes be seen as qualitatively different from the formal operations and abstract logical reasoning that adults tend to exhibit.
• Research into the development of processes related to executive function, such as abilities to adopt metacognitive strategies, inhibit distracting information and reason abstractly, as well as experimental challenges to stage-like theories of development, have given us a more accurate and broader understanding of the ways in which cognitive development can be driven.
• Neuroscientific approaches have given us detailed information about the development and roles of cortical regions that enable changes in types of thought that facilitate higher mental functions, and they highlight how the growth of working-memory capacities allows children to advance their abilities to think about objects and symbols and perform logical cognitive operations.
(4) Emotional development
• Many aspects of emotional development occur as a result of direct interaction between the infant and the immediate environment.
• Knowledge about the brain and emotional development has developed more slowly than other areas of developmental neuroscience.
• There is a great deal of contemporary debate about emotional development and it is hoped that neuroscience will provide answers to many of the outstanding questions.
• The ability to regulate emotions is seen as central to success in a number of different realms.
• The prefrontal cortex plays an essential role in achieving this.
• The idea that emotions are generated by an evolutionary primitive sub-cortex and managed by higher-level functioning in the frontal cortex is one that has influenced ideas about childcare.
• Attachment theory developed in the 1950s and throws a radical light on the way we care for young children.
• Neuroscience has shown us that the baby's brain is undeveloped at birth and that attachment plays a key role in the learning of emotional-relational patterns that form the basis of how we emotionally relate to significant others throughout life.
• Allan Schore's ideas on the development of connections between the right orbitofrontal cortex and areas of the subcortex have been influential, although much yet remains to be firmly established.
• The HPA axis is part of the way the body controls its reaction to stress. We are able to measure only cortisol production in young children and so have access to a complex hormonal system that is, in any case, only partially understood.
• Responsive and sensitive parenting seems to produce a resilience to stress that can be measured in young children by means of measuring cortisol levels in the saliva.
• Children who experience neglect or abuse do not develop the daily cortisol rhythm of healthy children.
• There have been many studies of Eastern European children raised in poor conditions in orphanages whose brains show differences in many areas, as compared to children and adults who have not had these experiences.
• There are many methodological problems with many of these studies.
• The Bucharest Early Intervention Project is beginning to produce results showing changes in a number of brain regions.
(5) Language and literacy
• Empiricist theories of language, such as those of Skinner and Bandura, emphasised that language is something that is acquired through learning. Nativist theories, such as those of Chomsky or Pinker, emphasised that language develops through an innate capacity.
• Social interactionist theories, such as that of Bruner, emphasised an innate capacity, together with a need for human interaction, as being necessary for language to develop.
• We now realise that all of these theories have some validity: imitation, encouragement and interaction as well as an inbuilt predisposition to use language all play their part in the development of language.
• The early work of Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke established that the left temporal region of the brain was important for language processing. While it is now established that there is a preference for left-temporal language processing, other areas of the brain are important for both speaking and listening.
• Brain plasticity allows for children who have suffered damage to the left temporal region to use other areas for language. Early language processing allows infants to recognise and categorise the sounds of the languages they hear spoken around them.
• The ability to hear all the sounds of all the world's languages diminishes after the age of six months.
• Unlike speaking and listening, reading is an unnatural activity and one that many children will need to be explicitly taught. While the exact mechanisms for achieving this remain the subject of considerable debate, the evidence now suggests that we translate the printed word into sound before we begin the process of comprehension.
• The visual word form area (VWFA) is seen as important in the process of reading, particularly decoding.
• Comprehending and thinking about reading involves more areas of the brain than are used in decoding text.
• We are only just beginning to understand which areas of the brain might be implicated in developmental dyslexia. Some studies have focused on the left and right temporoparietal regions; others have suggested areas such as the cerebellum, frontal lobe, caudate and thalamus.
(6) Learning and memory
• There are different systems of memory: implicit and explicit; long-term, intermediate-term and short-term.
• Implicit memory happens automatically and below the level of consciousness. Explicit memory can be consciously and verbally recalled.
• We are only just starting to understand the neurological basis of implicit memory. It is thought to be present from birth. It is the most important form of memory during the first years of life. There is some evidence that subcortical processing is an important aspect of implicit memory.
• Explicit memory develops later, although there is some evidence that babies have a primitive version of explicit memory, called a pre-explicit memory system, that is based in the hippocampus.
• The developing prefrontal cortex allows children to begin to process and take control over some aspects of explicit memory.
• Babies learn through imitation, having a preference for imitating a real human rather than a televised image.
• The mirror neuron system may be part of how such imitative learning is processed in the brain.
• We also learn by processing data from our senses and unconsciously detecting patterns in this data.
• We can also learn to perform new actions by understanding the similarities between one situation and the next, and so learning by analogy.
• Learning makes physical changes to the brain at the neuronal level, strengthening connections between neurons as well as altering the structure of the neurons themselves.
• This ability of the brain to reshape itself is called neural plasticity and it is a quality that the brain has throughout life. Long-term potentiation refers to the way in which synaptic connections alter as a result of experience.
• There is no evidence to support the idea that either children or adults have separate visual, audio and kinaesthetic learning styles.
• There is no evidence to support the idea that the right hemisphere of the brain supports creative thinking, while the left hemisphere is the centre for rational thinking.
• There is no evidence to support the idea that Brain Gym helps to develop the brain.
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