Convergence: Connecting Levels of Analysis in Psychological Science In the past, our field harbored distinct, and often competing, schools of thought that tackled different problems and produced findings that often appeared to diverge. Today, investigators attack shared problems at complementary levels of analysis and produce results that converge. Studies of people in a social world; mental systems of cognition and emotion; and biological mechanisms of the genome and the nervous system interconnect and yield an integrated psychological science. The APS 23rd Annual Convention displays, and celebrates, these advances in our field.

Biological Beings in Social Context

Genetic and Environmental Vulnerabilities: The Importance of Cross-Syndrome Comparisons

Friday, May 25, 2012, 4:30 PM - 5:15 PM
Sheraton Ballroom IV

Annette Karmiloff-Smith

Annette Karmiloff-Smith
Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom

One might expect that children with different genetic mutations or those raised in low-SES environments would display different deficits. While this holds true for phenotypic outcomes, cross-syndrome comparisons in infancy reveal many common neural and socio-cognitive deficits. The challenge is to track trajectories over developmental time - rather than focusing on end-states, particularly where start-states are similar - but neuro-cognitive outcomes are different. This leads me to challenge the use of neuropsychological models of adult lesions in accounting for the dynamics of change in genetic and environmentally-induced disorders in children.

Read the APS Daily Observation on Annette Karmiloff-Smith.

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Subject Area: Biological Beings in Social Context

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