Astle Duncan E, Scerif Gaia
Attention, Brain and Cognitive Development Group Department of Experimental Psychology University of Oxford South Parks Road, Oxford OX13UD, UK.
Dev Psychobiol. 2009 Mar;51(2):107-18. doi: 10.1002/dev.20350.
Adult cognitive neuroscience employs a wide variety of techniques to investigate a broad range of behavioral and cognitive functions. One prominent area of study is that of executive control, complemented by a smaller but growing literature exploring the developmental cognitive neuroscience of executive control. To date this approach has often compared children with specific developmental disorders, such as ADHD and ASD, with typically developing controls. Whilst these comparisons have done much to advance our understanding of the neural markers that underpin behavioral difficulties at specific time-points in development, we contend that they should leave developmental cognitive neuroscientists wanting. Studying the neural correlates of typical changes in executive control in their own right can reveal how different neural mechanisms characteristic of the adult end-state emerge, and it can therefore inform the adult cognitive neuroscience of executive control itself. The current review addresses the extent to which developmentalists and adult cognitive neuroscientists have tapped this common ground. Some very elegant investigations illustrate how seemingly common processes in adulthood present as separable in childhood, on the basis of their distinctive developmental trajectories. These demonstrations have implications not only for an understanding of changing behavior from infancy through childhood and adolescence into adulthood, but, moreover, for our grasp of the adult end-state per se. We contend that, if used appropriately, developmental cognitive neuroscience could enable us to construct a more mechanistic account of executive control.
成人认知神经科学运用各种各样的技术来研究广泛的行为和认知功能。一个突出的研究领域是执行控制，同时，探索执行控制的发展认知神经科学的文献虽较少但在不断增加，对其起到了补充作用。迄今为止，这种方法常常将患有特定发育障碍（如注意力缺陷多动障碍和自闭症谱系障碍）的儿童与发育正常的对照组进行比较。虽然这些比较在很大程度上推进了我们对在发育特定时间点支撑行为困难的神经标志物的理解，但我们认为它们仍会让发育认知神经科学家感到意犹未尽。就其本身而言，研究执行控制典型变化的神经关联可以揭示成年最终状态特有的不同神经机制是如何出现的，因此它可以为执行控制的成人认知神经科学提供信息。本综述探讨了发展心理学家和成人认知神经科学家在多大程度上利用了这一共同基础。一些非常精巧的研究表明，基于其独特的发展轨迹，成年期看似常见的过程在儿童期却是可分离的。这些论证不仅对理解从婴儿期到儿童期、青少年期再到成年期行为的变化有意义，而且对我们理解成年最终状态本身也有意义。我们认为，如果运用得当，发展认知神经科学能够使我们构建一个关于执行控制的更具机制性的解释。
