Myrtle McGraw''s Unrecognized Conceptual Contribution to Developmental Psychology

In the late nineteenth century and through much of the twentieth century, the notion of the early developmental autonomy of motor behavior pervaded behavioral embryology and the developmental psychology of infant behavior. In the midst of this predeterministic climate of opinion concerning motor development, Myrtle McGraw briefly and tentatively broached the probabilistic epigenetic notion of a bidirectional or reciprocal relationship between structural maturation and function, whereby structural maturation of the nervous system is influenced by functional activity as well as the other way around. Myrtle McGraw thus anticipated our current understanding of the role of experience in the cortical and motor maturation of infants in the first year of postnatal life. It is all the more remarkable that she made this contribution when the theoretical climate of opinion was epitomized by predeterministic epigenetic thinking. In the same vein, McGraw's second unrecognized contribution is her clear formulation of a suitably flexible critical period concept in 1935, one that is consonant with our current understanding.     

McGraw and the Development of Unaided Walking

McGraw's research and theoretical principles concerning early neuromotor development are reexamined in light of contemporary research—primarily for unaided walking. McGraw studied emergence of higher order control of neuromotor behavior with special emphasis on development from the neonate's reflexive repertoire to the onset of purposive behavior toward the end of the first year. Contemporary research supports and clarifies her observations providing greater detail about the factors involved in the formation of higher order control and amplifying the role of experience, particularly for decreasing disorganization during periods of transition. The development from reflexive to instrumental control is clarified as an alternative to the disorganized phase and to the “disappearance” of “reflexive” behaviors. A cognitive metamorphosis at the end of the first year not only explains the onset of qualitatively new behaviors, including purposive neuromotor actions, but provides the infant with characteristics that define our species: unaided walking, functional object use, and naming. Possible mechanisms underlying this transition are discussed in terms of the emergence of a higher level of consciousness.     

Call for a follow-up study of experiments on long-term deprivation of human infants

Three experiments on long-term isolation and educational deprivation of infants were performed 50 years ago by Myrtle McGraw and by Wayne and Marsena Dennis. Current textbooks regularly present these studies incorrectly as supporting the notion that early motor development is unaffected by environment. This presentation is shown to be incorrect by a reanalysis of the studies which indicates severe and far-reaching negative effects of the depriving conditions upon the experimental infants. A follow-up study of the experimental subjects in later years and a publication of McGraw's unreported study are called for.     

The Brain and Development of Function

Neurobiological and functional development are discontinuous. The interrelationships between identifiable morphological processes and the developmental course of functional display are astonishingly weak. One of the first persons who tried to find a solution for this problem was McGraw. This paper takes up some of her ideas and develops them in the light of present knowledge. A plea is made for variability as the basic characteristic of normal development. Variability results from the fact that the normal brain is an active organ system which handles stimulations voluntarily. The brain's action/reaction ratio determines its functional integrity. During development variability has two aspects. One denotes the ability to construct pluriform strategies—primary variability—and the second the ability to select the proper strategy in any particular situation—adaptive variability. A damaged nervous system is characterized by a shift of the action/reaction ratio to the reactive side resulting in a decrease of variability and an inability to deal adequately with environmental changes. Issues like variations between and within individual infants and regressions of functional ability as features of normal—neurobiological—development were already recognized by McGraw as signs of nature/nurture interaction at a time in which neurobehavioral development was still considered to be a strictly maturational process. Her interpretation of behavioral development in terms of neurobiological processes stands at the cradle of modern insight.     

Brain plasticity,learning, and developmental disabilities

This is a time of significant gains in methodological development for examining the developing human brain. New efforts are underway to unify the understanding of the development of brain anatomy with physiological, cellular and molecular processes that influence behavioral development. This special issue provides animal models of behavior and brain development, applications of noninvasive imaging and genetic methods to human brain development and behavior, and select reviews of how these models and methods have been applied to the examination of developmental disabilities. This issue reflects a sampling of current approaches to the study of brain plasticity, development and learning in typically and atypically developing humans and animals.     

The role of frontal lobe functioning in the development of infant self-regulatory behavior.

In the last two decades, there has been tremendous growth in two fields of study related to human infant development: (1) the development of neural processes during the early postnatal years and (2) the development of self-regulatory behavior. In an attempt to stimulate research on the relation between early brain development and self-regulatory processes, several hypotheses pertaining to the role of frontal lobe functioning in the development of emotion regulation during infancy are proposed. The results of a study of the relation between frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) activity and emotional behavior of 21-month-old infants are reported. It was found that increases in frontal lobe activation were associated with increases in emotional arousal, while EEG activity recorded from the parietal region showed either a reciprocal pattern of activation or did not change as a function of level of emotional arousal. These results provide evidence for the specialized role of the frontal lobe in mediating emotional behavior during infancy.     

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: An Overview

When fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) was initially described, diagnosis was based upon physical parameters including facial anomalies and growth retardation, with evidence of developmental delay or mental deficiency. Forty years of research has shown that FAS lies towards the extreme end of what are now termed fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). The most profound effects of prenatal alcohol exposure are on the developing brain and the cognitive and behavioral effects that ensue. Alcohol exposure affects brain development via numerous pathways at all stages from neurogenesis to myelination. For example, the same processes that give rise to the facial characteristics of FAS also cause abnormal brain development. Behaviors as diverse as executive functioning to motor control are affected. This special issue of Neuropsychology Review addresses these changes in brain and behavior highlighting the relationship between the two. A diagnostic goal is to recognize FAS as a disorder of brain rather than one of physical characteristics.     

Comments on 'Call for a follow-up study of experiments on long-term deprivation of human infants' by Micha Razel

Razel's examination of the early work of McGraw and the Dennises puts a heavy requirement on studies of single subjects and on some possible interpretations for which, unfortunately, documentation is insufficient. Further, the Dennises placed more emphasis on the autotelic quality of motor mastery than Razel notes. Rather than looking for these persons whose behavior was studied long ago, direct study of motor mastery by systematic provision of enrichment conditions during early development is more likely to be instructive and a better use of scientific resources.     

The Price of Friendship: When,Why, and How Relational Norms Guide Social Exchange Behavior

This article critically examines McGraw and Tetlock's (2005) notion of relational framing and offers directions for future development of the conceptual model. I begin by discussing the inherent limitations of scenario studies and show how the emergence of attribution analysis in real interpersonal interactions may qualify the results obtained in these studies. I then discuss the norm consistency and social identity maintenance mechanisms proposed in the article and advance several alternative mediators of the phenomenon, including affect and anticipated interaction. I recommend experimental designs that could be used to isolate the role of the different mediators and suggest the incorporation of process measures. I end with a discussion of conditions under which relational framing may not matter and propose a research agenda for consumer researchers interested in building on the solid foundation laid by McGraw and Tetlock.     

Phenylketonuria in Children and Mothers: Genes, Environments, Behavior

ABSTRACT— Phenylketonuria (PKU) is an inborn metabolic error in which metabolism of phenylalanine into tyrosine is disrupted. If the diet of an infant with PKU is not restricted, blood phenylalanine levels are elevated, leading to irremediable brain damage and severe mental retardation. Children with PKU who are placed early and continuously on a low-phenylalanine diet develop normal levels of intelligence, and brain damage is largely prevented. However, if the diet of a mother with PKU is unrestricted during her pregnancy, high phenylalanine levels in her blood can cross the placental barrier and damage the developing fetus in multiple ways. These results demonstrate how genes and environmental factors combine to create prenatal environments that can have profound effects on the growth and development of offspring during infancy and childhood.     

What has fMRI told us about the Development of Cognitive Control through Adolescence?

Cognitive control, the ability to voluntarily guide our behavior, continues to improve throughout adolescence. Below we review the literature on age-related changes in brain function related to response inhibition and working memory, which support cognitive control. Findings from studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) indicate that processing errors, sustaining a cognitive control state, and reaching adult levels of precision, persist through adolescence. Developmental changes in patterns of brain function suggest that core regions of the circuitry underlying cognitive control are on-line early in development. However, age-related changes in localized processes across the brain, and in establishing long range connections that support top-down modulation of behavior, more effective neural processing for optimal mature executive function. While great progress has been made in understanding the age-related changes in brain processes underlying cognitive development, there are still important challenges in developmental neuroimaging methods and the interpretation of data that need to be addressed.     

Synaptogenesis and heritable aspects of executive attention

In humans, changes in brain structure and function can be measured non-invasively during postnatal development. In animals, advanced optical imaging measures can track the formation of synapses during learning and behavior. With the recent progress in these technologies, it is appropriate to begin to assess how the physiological processes of synapse, circuit, and neural network formation relate to the process of cognitive development. Of particular interest is the development of executive function, which develops more gradually in humans. One approach that has shown promise is molecular genetics. The completion of the human genome project and the human genome diversity project make it straightforward to ask whether variation in a particular gene correlates with variation in behavior, brain structure, brain activity, or all of the above. Strategies that unify the wealth of biochemical knowledge pertaining to synapse formation with the functional measures of brain structure and activity may lead to new insights in developmental cognitive psychology.     

Collateral social development accompanying reinforcement of outdoor play in a preschool child

A 3-yr-old preschool girl with deficits in both motor and social repertoires was socially reinforced by teachers for use of outdoor play equipment, as a contribution to her motor skills and as a tactic to produce increased social contact with other children. Her use of outdoor play equipment, and various examples of her social interaction with both teachers and children were scored in the course of experimental development and analysis of her rate of equipment use. Equipment use increased greatly under the social reinforcement contingency; certain desirable examples of social interaction with other children showed a collateral development; other examples of adult-oriented development remained constant; and one class of undesirable baby-like behavior decreased markedly. Thus, the study provided a picture of what other behavior changes may take place in the course of behavior modification aimed at a single response class.     

Letters From V: Adolescent Personality Development in Sociohistorical Context

Systematic content analysis of personal documents is used to assess the course of personality development in one adolescent female exposed to traumatic historical and personal events, as well as more normative life changes. Seventy-one letters written by a young girl to her former teacher over a 9-year period comprise the data for this study. Our analyses assess the normal developmental processes of preoccupation with identity formation and the establishment of intimate relationships, as well as responses to life changes (emigration, marriage, pregnancy). Overall, results suggest that despite serious challenges and losses, this individual experienced normal personality development throughout her trying adolescence. In addition, particular life events affected the course of that development. Factors which may have facilitated her resilience are discussed.     

What Are the Brain Mechanisms on Which Psychological Processes Are Based?

ABSTRACT— That the human brain is the organ of the mind is not in dispute, but we know remarkably little about the brain mechanisms underlying the mind. What are the functional structures and computational processes of the human brain that subserve cognition, emotion, and behavior? Given the complexity of the human brain, progress in understanding the functional organization and structure of the human brain depends on sophisticated theoretical specifications of the psychological representations and processes that differentiate two or more comparison conditions. Psychological scientists, therefore, are well positioned to lead the search for brain mechanisms underlying psychological processes. Doing so constitutes an expansion of the purview of psychological science beyond a science of behavior, and beyond a science of the mind, to include a science of the brain. Such an expansion of the mission of psychological science has implications for the infrastructure and training needs of the discipline.     

Cognitive and affective development in adolescence

Questions about the nature of normative and atypical development in adolescence have taken on special significance in the last few years, as scientists have begun to recast old portraits of adolescent behavior in the light of new knowledge about brain development. Adolescence is often a period of especially heightened vulnerability as a consequence of potential disjunctions between developing brain, behavioral and cognitive systems that mature along different timetables and under the control of both common and independent biological processes. Taken together, these developments reinforce the emerging understanding of adolescence as a critical or sensitive period for a reorganization of regulatory systems, a reorganization that is fraught with both risks and opportunities.     

Rule acquisition events in the discovery of problem-solving strategies

Although there are many machine-learning programs that can acquire new problem-solving strategies, it is not known exactly how their processes will manifest themselves in human behavior, if at all. In order to find out, a line-by-line protocol analysis was conducted of a subject discovering problem-solving strategies. A model was developed that could explain 96% of the lines in the protocol. On this analysis, the subject's learning was confined to 11 rule acquisition events, wherein she temporarily abandoned her normal problem solving and focused on improving her strategic knowledge. Further analysis showed that: (1) Not all rule acquisition events are triggered by impasses; (2) Rules are acquired gradually, both because of competition between new and old rules, and because of the subject's apparently deliberate policy of gradual generalization. (3) This subject took a scientific approach to strategy discovery, even planning and conducting small experiments.     

Development of eye-movement control

Cognitive control of behavior continues to improve through adolescence in parallel with important brain maturational processes including synaptic pruning and myelination, which allow for efficient neuronal computations and the functional integration of widely distributed circuitries supporting top-down control of behavior. This is also a time when psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and mood disorders, emerge reflecting a particularly vulnerability to impairments in development during adolescence. Oculomotor studies provide a unique neuroscientific approach to make precise associations between cognitive control and brain circuitry during development that can inform us of impaired systems in psychopathology. In this review, we first describe the development of pursuit, fixation, and visually-guided saccadic eye movements, which collectively indicate early maturation of basic sensorimotor processes supporting reflexive, exogenously-driven eye movements. We then describe the literature on the development of the cognitive control of eye movements as reflected in the ability to inhibit a prepotent eye movement in the antisaccade task, as well as making an eye movement guided by on-line spatial information in working memory in the oculomotor delayed response task. Results indicate that the ability to make eye movements in a voluntary fashion driven by endogenous plans shows a protracted development into adolescence. Characterizing the transition through adolescence to adult-level cognitive control of behavior can inform models aimed at understanding the neurodevelopmental basis of psychiatric disorders.     

Theoretic Note: The Relation of Embryology to Linguistic and Cognitive Process

This paper is a conceptual essay that views the unfolding or individuation from the ovum to mind/brain form and process as the outcome of a unitary highly conserved pattern of epigenetic growth. The principle question concerns the extent to which the cognitive process can be understood as an extension or replication of primordial trends in the growth of organism. There are several lines of embryological study, some with a clear relation to cognitive process, others perhaps merely analogous, but there are sufficient data to support the claim that fundamental patterns in development recur in a momentary act of thought or perception. Indeed, the Bauplan that accounts for brain maturation at the cellular level accounts for the generation of the mind/brain state in maturity. The specification of cells in fetal brain growth corresponds with the progressive individuation of psychic structures in the course of early development. Growth trends in epigenetic process that translate the genetic code to morphology and physiology persist in the brain or psyche as patterns of mental process. Psychic structure is temporal, not spatial, and the structure of the mind/brain is ongoing formative process, not the resultant stabilities. One can say that in the brain, morphology is the form that process takes early in development, while brain function is the form process takes once structure is relatively settled. Put otherwise, morphogenesis first lays down form as structure, then lays down form as function (see Goodwin in J Theor Biol 97:43–55, 1982). The structure of the mind/brain is not a circuit board that outputs function, but is a recurrent activity that actualizes in behavior. Cognition is a mode of growth that is carried over from embryonic to adult life.     

Developmental imaging genetics: Linking dopamine function to adolescent behavior

Adolescence is a period of development characterized by numerous neurobiological changes that significantly influence behavior and brain function. Adolescence is of particular interest due to the alarming statistics indicating that mortality rates increase two to three-fold during this time compared to childhood, due largely to a peak in risk-taking behaviors resulting from increased impulsivity and sensation seeking. Furthermore, there exists large unexplained variability in these behaviors that are in part mediated by biological factors. Recent advances in molecular genetics and functional neuroimaging have provided a unique and exciting opportunity to non-invasively study the influence of genetic factors on brain function in humans. While genes do not code for specific behaviors, they do determine the structure and function of proteins that are essential to the neuronal processes that underlie behavior. Therefore, studying the interaction of genotype with measures of brain function over development could shed light on critical time points when biologically mediated individual differences in complex behaviors emerge. Here we review animal and human literature examining the neurobiological basis of adolescent development related to dopamine neurotransmission. Dopamine is of critical importance because of (1) its role in cognitive and affective behaviors, (2) its role in the pathogenesis of major psychopathology, and (3) the protracted development of dopamine signaling pathways over adolescence. We will then focus on current research examining the role of dopamine-related genes on brain function. We propose the use of imaging genetics to examine the influence of genetically mediated dopamine variability on brain function during adolescence, keeping in mind the limitations of this approach.