Editorial: Understanding Trajectories and Promoting Change From Early to Complex Skills in Typical and Atypical Development: A Cross-Population Approach

Resumen de los autores

Theoretical perspectives such as neuroconstructivism, dynamical systems, or developmental cascades (Iverson, 2010; Karmiloff-Smith, 2009; Masten & Cicchetti, 2010; Thelen & Smith, 2007) suggest that early perceptual, motor, cognitive, and communicative skills are related in development with cascading effects of one domain on multiple, seemingly unrelated domains. In particular, dynamical systems views emphasize that development is experience-dependent, characterized by a continuous interplay between the developing individual, their structural and functional constraints, and their social and physical environments. In recent years, several empirical studies have reported findings supporting these theories, showing that sensory and motor development may influence cognitive skills, language, social interaction, literacy development, numeracy, and academic achievement (e.g., D’Souza et al. 2017; Libertus & Hauf, 2017; Zuccarini et al., 2017). These findings suggest that early developmental risk factors may depend on the interplay among genetic, biological, and environmental factors (LeBarton & Iverson, 2016; Sansavini et al., 2011; Thomas et al., 2020). Taking such an integrative view of development raises several important questions. For example, early identification of children at risk, their developmental trajectories, possible sub-optimal outcomes, and effects on the environment as well as the role of protective factors or the effectiveness of various early interventions need to be more deeply investigated across different developmental domains and populations.By referring to the above integrative view, the current Research Topic includes 21 articles covering theoretical and applied perspectives on three main issues: i) cascading effects of early motor, perceptual, attention, communicative, language, and cognitive skills, ii) impact of environmental factors (e.g., caregivers’ behaviors, interventions, and cultural contexts) on development, and iii) cross-domain relations. These issues are investigated across populations with typical, at risk or atypical development.Cascading effects of early motor, perceptual, attention, communicative, language and cognitive skillsSeveral contributions examine the cascading effects of early motor, perceptual, communicative, language, and cognitive skills. Two articles provide an overview of this area by reviewing the existing literature. Gonzalez et al. review the predictive capacities of gross and fine motor skills for language outcomes in typical development from birth up to 5 years of age. The review highlights that changes in motor development provide children with new learning opportunities to interact with objects, their environment, and caregivers, with both gross and fine motor skills related to language outcomes. Similarly, Vissers et al. review the development of inner speech. They identify a fourth stage, i.e., condensed inner speech, and argue that inner speech impairment may account for cognitive deficits in children with developmental language disorder, hearing loss, and autism. Implications for assessing and stimulating inner speech during interventions in clinical populations are discussed.In addition to these reviews, several empirical studies report new results on the cascading effects of development in one domain on other domains contributing to identifying early predictors of developmental delays. Zuccarini et al. examine the intra-domain and cross-domain cascading effects of early gross motor skills on later motor and cognitive development in infants born extremely preterm and full-term. Gross motor skills at 6 months of age relate to gross motor, fine motor, and cognitive skills at 12 months and predict gross motor delays. These findings highlight the importance of assessing gross motor, fine motor, and cognitive skills early, especially in extremely preterm children. Bettoni et al. find associations between the ability to learn and generalize abstract rules from sequences of visual shapes at 7 months of age and grammatical skills at 2 years of age, providing one of the first pieces of evidence that rule learning mechanisms are involved in language acquisition and can act as an early neurocognitive marker for language impairments. Van Baar et al. examine early attention problems that can hinder cognitive and socio-emotional development. Their results show that lower attention skills at 18 months predict slower cognitive development at 24 months suggesting that assessments of early attention capacities can be useful predictors for development across domains. Luke et al. also examine the predictive value of early skills for later development by focusing on early communicative skills such as pointing and iconic gestures. Their results show that index-finger pointing at 12 months and comprehension of iconic gestures at 3 years of age predict language skills between 5 and 6 years of age in typically developing children and children with a language delay or developmental language disorder. Sansavini et al. focus on the role of deictic, iconic, and representational gesture production at 18 months in order to identify language delays between 18 and 36 months in children with genetic or biological risks and low-risk peers. Their results reveal that low rates of pointing at 18 months are a marker of language delay both in siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder and in extremely preterm children. The findings of both Luke et al. and Sansavini et al. support the assumption of an integrated speech–gesture communication system, with limited pointing production acting as an early marker of language delay.Two further studies examined the relations between language and cognitive skills at preschools age and oral and written language skills at school age. Perez-Pereira et al. examine through a mediation model the relation among executive functions at age 4 and 5, language measures and phonological awareness at age 5, and reading abilities a

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Sansavini, A., Libertus, K., Guarini, A., Libertus, M. E., Libertus, M. E., Benassi, M., & Iverson, J. M. (2021). Editorial: Understanding Trajectories and Promoting Change From Early to Complex Skills in Typical and Atypical Development: A Cross-Population Approach. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647464