Brain development
Theory
Evaluation
Some behaviors are seen very early in the life of a child. In addition, some areas of the brain have been shown to develop predictably and may have "sensitive" periods for development.
There is support for brain maturation linked to development in animal research.
It is not possible, however, for us to carry out developmental tests in PET or fMRI. Often, research is carried out on infants with suspected clinical symptoms.
Even though infants appear to be “pre-wired” for certain types of learning, when we study even 4-month-old infants, they have already had hundreds of hours of experience. This means we cannot rule out the role of learning and neuroplasticity.
In most aspects of development, maturation, and neuroplasticity are not mutually exclusive - that is, neither theory can explain the complexity of human development on its own. Development is the interaction of brain maturation and neuroplasticity as a result of learning from the environment.