ABSTRACT
Data from adult neuropsychological patients and studies of individuals with genetic disorders are often used by evolutionary psychologists to motivate strong nativist claims about the organization of the neonate brain in terms of innately specified cognitive modules (Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992; Duchaine, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2001; Pinker, 1997). Such hypotheses are based, in our view, on static snapshots of phenotypic outcomes in middle childhood and adulthood and tend to ignore one vital causal factor affecting disorders, that is, the actual process of ontogenetic development. In contrast to nativists, we take a truly developmental approach to both normal and atypical outcomes by focusing on the infant start state and the developmental trajectories that lead to such outcomes.
