Neuroconstructivism

Broadbent, Hannah and Mareschal, Denis (2020) Neuroconstructivism. In: Hupp, S. and Jewell, J.D. (eds.) The Encyclopedia of Child and Adolescent Development. Wiley, pp. 1-11. ISBN 9781119161899.

Abstract

Neuroconstructivism is a framework that unifies knowledge from cognitive neuroscience, computational modeling, Piagetian constructivism, and epigenetics to describe how the brain becomes progressively more specialized over developmental time. The emergence of increasingly more complex mental representations is understood to occur via experience‐dependent processes and within the context of multiple bidirectional interactions across all levels of description—from the genome, to neural networks, to the organism's social and physical environment. The theoretical framework puts forward a number of foundational principles that describe these contextual effects at the level of engenement, encellment, embrainment, embodiment, and ensocialment. In bringing these aspects together, neuroconstructivist theory provides an alternative to traditional nativist and empiricist viewpoints of cognitive development. Instead, neuroconstructivism maintains that human cognition is not a state defined by innately specified independent modules, but a process toward domain specificity that emerges over developmental time, within a dynamic system and environment. This framework consequently has significant implications for the study of developmental disorders, as well as typical development, by emphasizing the importance of how basic‐level deficits can have subtle cascading effects across highly interconnected brain regions through ontogeny, and which yield variable developmental outcomes.

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