10 Brain and Cognitive Development Models of Neurobehavioral Development

The central debate within developmental psychology for many decades focused on the question of whether and to what extent humans are innately prepared to interpret and act in the world, and to what extent they rely on learning and/or experience. Nativists propose the existence of a core set of innate concepts that form the necessary foundation for later learning (Gelman, 2000; Spelke & Kinzler, 2007). Proponents of traditional nurture-based views (represented, for example, by ecological, neocon-structivist, and information processing perspectives) argue that complex concepts emerge from more primitive, yet innate, sensory, motor, and learning abilities (Elman et al., 1996; S. P. Johnson, 2003; Sirois et al., 2008). Both sides in the psychological debate assume that innate factors originate within the organism and are presumably par