Brain Maturation and Cognitive Development: Comparative and Cross-cultural Perspectives

by Anne Petersen

Overview

This volume adopts a unique, multidisciplinary approach to the study of the development of the human brain and early behavior. It includes chapters by researchers from several disciplines whose work addresses specific aspects of brain-behavioral interactions in development. The chapters provide strong evidence that the development of both brain and behavior is a response to biological and environmental variations.

Language is also discussed, and provides a useful example of biosocial development because linguistic and brain functions and development can be examined under controlled conditions of both genetic and environmental deprivation. Research in this area has produced particularly exciting results pointing to the universality of language capacity among humans and illuminating the processes by which language competence develops.

Brain Maturation and Cognitive Development provides new views in the understanding of human nature and present new, biosocially oriented research directions that are unique in their focus.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780202363950
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	11/15/2010
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kathleen R. Gibson is professor emeritus in the department of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Texas, Medical School at Houston. Some of her works include Language and Intelligence In Monkeys and Apes, Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution, and Evolutionary Anatomy of the Human Neocortex. Anne C. Petersen is senior vice president for programs at the WK Kellogg Foundation and was previously dean of the College of Health and Human Development at Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of numerous books, including Promoting the Health of Adolescents , Youth Unemployment in Society , and Women and Science.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors vii

Acknowledgments viii

Preface ix

I Introduction

1 Introduction Kathleen R. Gibson Anne C. Petersen 3

2 Basic Neuroanatomy for the Nonspecialist Kathleen R. Gibson 13

II Principles and Regularities of Neural Development

3 Myelination and Behavioral Development: A Comparative Perspective on Questions of Neoteny, Altriciality and Intelligence Kathleen R. Gibson 29

4 Brain, Behavior, and Developmental Genetics Robert Plomin Hsiu-zu Ho 65

5 Nutritional and Environmental Interactions in Brain Development Brain Morgan Kathleen R. Gibson 91

6 Environmental Influences on the Young Brain Marian C. Diamond 107

III Primate and Human Behavioral Development from a Biosocial Perspective

7 Frontal Lobe Involvement in Cognitive Changes During the First Year of Life Adele Diamond 127

8 Universals of Behavioral Development in Relation to Brain Myelination Melvin Konner 181

9 Developmental Transitions of Cognitive Functioning in Rural Kenya and Metropolitan America Charles M. Super 225

10 Cognitive Changes at Adolescence: Biological Perspectives Julia A. Graber Anne C. Petersen 253

11 Assessment of Brain Functioning in Individuals at Biosocial Risk: Examples from Alcoholic Families Jeannette L. Johnson Jon E. Rolf James L. Rebetta 281

IV Biosocial Sciences and the Neurology of Language

12 Levels of Structure in a Communication System Developed without a Language Model Susan Goldin-Meadow Carolyn Mylander 315

13 Some Structural and Developmental Correlates of Human Speech Arnold B. Scheibel 345

14 Neurobiology of Cognitive and Language Processing: Effects of Early Experience Helen J. Neville 355

Index 381