Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Ph.D.
M.I.N.D. Institute Distinguished Lecturer Series – December 12, 2007
Biographical Information
Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Ph.D., was until September 2006 Professor and Head of the Neurocognitive
Development Unit at the University College London Institute of Child Health, where her internationallyrecognized research team studied infant and child development. She is currently a Professorial Research Fellow at
the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck, University of London. Karmiloff-Smith holds a
"Doctorat en Psychologie Génétique et Expérimentale" from the University of Geneva, where she studied with the
famous Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget. She has been elected a member of the Academia Europaea, a fellow of
the British Academy and a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She was the scientific consultant on the
Emmy-award winning TV series, Baby It's You, for which she wrote the accompanying best seller, and for Wallto-Wall TV’s follow-up “A Child’s World.” In 1995, Karmiloff-Smith was awarded the British Psychological
Society's Book Award for her book Beyond Modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive science. A
second book for the general public, Everything your baby would ask if only he or she could speak, co-authored
with her daughter, Kyra Karmiloff, was No.2 on the American List of Best Parenting Books. She recently
published, again with her daughter, “Pathways to Language: From foetus to adolescent” with Harvard University
Press. In 2002 Karmiloff-Smith won the European Science Foundation Latsis Prize for the Cognitive Sciences,
and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Université de Louvain in Belgium, and honorary research
fellowships from Zhejiang University Children’s Hospital, Hanzhou and from the Zhejiang Normal University,
both in PR China. In 2006 she was appointed to the Honorary Nico Fridja Chair in Cognitive Science, University
of Amsterdam. She is the author of 7 books and over 200 chapters and articles in scientific journals, as well as a
series of booklets for parents on different aspects of fetal, infant and child development. Her writings have been
translated into at least seventeen languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Danish,
Swedish, Norwegian, Malay, Arabic and Hebrew.
Presentation Abstracts
Understanding disorders of mind/brain: The necessity of a truly developmental perspective (4 pm)
The aim of this talk is to encourage a truly developmental way of thinking about developmental disorders and
about the use of neuro-imaging techniques to explore atypical development. I will differentiate static approaches
from dynamic approaches to brain abnormality and to the dichotomy often found in the literature between domainspecific and a single, domain-general processor/blank slate, arguing for a third option: Neuroconstructivism. This
latter approach identifies why many of the assumptions underlying developmental neuro-imaging research and
stemming from adult neuropsychology (the localization assumption, the static assumption and the deficit
assumption) are inappropriate for developmental disorders. I will question some typically used matching
procedures for disorders research, and argue for the tracing of full, task-specific developmental trajectories. I will
also challenge the notion of “pure” deficits, highlighting a deeper cognitive- and brain-level examination of
behavioural scores that fall “in the normal range”. Finally, I will make the case for cross-domain, cross-syndrome,
multidisciplinary research from infancy through childhood to the phenotypical end-state in adulthood.
Modules, genes and evolution: Insights from developmental disorders (6 pm)
The aim of this talk is to contrast two very different views of human development and the various syndromes
that can occur when development goes awry. The first view argues for innately specified cognitive-level modules
(highly specialized brain systems for processing number, language, face processing and the like) which are
considered to be either intact or damaged/missing, and to be specified in our genes and passed down from
evolution. A series of examples from psychological, genetic and evolutionary research will be presented that
seem to support this position. In the second part of the talk, I will re-examine these data in the light of a very
different view of modules, genes and evolution. At the level of modules, I will argue that rather than the starting
point of development, they are the emergent product of a developmental process of gradual specialization and
localization of brain function, which often fails to occur in the atypical brain, despite proficient behaviour that
falls “in the normal range”. I will show that genes play a far more complex role than the one-to-one mappings
implied by the first approach. Arguing against the Swiss Army Knife view of the infant brain advocated by some
evolutionary psychologists, I will submit that across different species evolution involves a very dynamic balance
between pre-specification and plasticity for learning. Finally, I will show how the second view advocates the
introduction of intervention studies very early in infancy, and perhaps even in the final three months of intrauterine life during which auditory processing is very active.