ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author focuses on a summer research assistant position she undertook with Annette Karmiloff-Smith in the Neurocognitive Development Unit at the Institute of Child Health in London in 2000. She recalls an early project that cuts to the heart of whether developmental disorders can be characterised by domain-specific or domain-general deficits, and shows how a study utilising cross-domain comparisons helped answer this question. The project investigated numerical skills and language skills in Williams syndrome, the disorder that was then the focus of Annette’s work. From this early study, the author draws out the three key lessons that she then applied in her subsequent PhD on the typical and atypical development of the attention system. She then aims to guide her own reflections through three insights instigated by collaborations with Annette: a focus on atypical development, a call for clarity about theory and hypothesis making, and finally an interest in mechanistic understanding.
