ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on research investigating developmental trajectories in typically developing (TD) infants and children and in those with neurodevelopmental disorders. In particular, we concentrate on studies of attention, language development, numeracy, and face processing in Down syndrome (DS), Williams syndrome (WS), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), specific language impairment (SLI), and Fragile X syndrome (FXS). We start by introducing Neuroconstructivism and highlighting the dynamics of gene expression and brain development through interactions with the environment. We then discuss current research on families at genetic risk for a given disorder, and how this research goes beyond the investigation of a specific cognitive ability (e.g., language development in SLI) to explore how specificity might emerge from interrelations between different abilities over developmental time, i.e., how deficits in basic-level processes, e.g., rapid timing or global processing, can in turn affect the development of higher-level cognitive-linguistic abilities to greater or lesser degrees. We also stress the importance of cross-syndrome comparisons to pinpoint what is syndrome-specific and what is syndrome-general. Finally, we argue that developmental disorders are key to understanding typical development and that the Neuroconstructivist approach provides a strong framework within which to disentangle complex cognitive processes across developmental time. We conclude that the convergence of different neuroimaging techniques that identify both the temporal and spatial signatures of brain networks may shed new light on the relationship between the brain and cognitive development, provided changing structural and functional neural modifications are traced over developmental time.
