Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, , Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2013 Dec 9;369(1634):20130407. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0407. Print 2014.
The discipline of cognitive neuropsychology has been important for informing theories of cognition and describing the nature of acquired cognitive disorders, but its applicability in a developmental context has been questioned. Here, we revisit this issue, asking whether the cognitive neuropsychological approach can be helpful for exploring the nature and causes of developmental disorders and, if so, how. We outline the key features of the cognitive neuropsychological approach, and then consider how some of the major challenges to this approach from a developmental perspective might be met. In doing so, we distinguish between challenges to the methods of cognitive neuropsychology and those facing its deeper conceptual underpinnings. We conclude that the detailed investigation of patterns of both associations and dissociations, and across both developmental and acquired cases, can assist in describing the cognitive deficits within developmental disorders and in delineating possible causal pathways to their acquisition.
认知神经心理学这一学科对于启发认知理论和描述后天认知障碍的本质非常重要，但它在发展背景下的适用性一直受到质疑。在这里，我们重新探讨这个问题，探讨认知神经心理学方法是否有助于探索发展障碍的本质和原因，如果可以，具体应该怎么做。我们概述了认知神经心理学方法的关键特征，然后考虑如何应对这一方法在发展视角下面临的一些主要挑战。在这样做的过程中，我们区分了认知神经心理学方法所面临的挑战，以及其更深层次的概念基础所面临的挑战。我们的结论是，对关联和分离模式的详细研究，无论是在发展案例还是后天获得的案例中，都有助于描述发展障碍中的认知缺陷，并描绘出获得这些缺陷的可能因果途径。
