Understanding developmental cascades and experience: Diversity matters

Abstract

This Presidential Address is aimed at considering how infant development can be understood in terms of developmental cascades. Adopting a developmental cascades approach may be especially useful for understanding development in infancy, when changes occur in multiple domains over relatively short time spans. Thinking about change in terms of developmental cascades highlights the role of the input in development, both in terms of how the input changes with development and in terms of how differences in the input lead to different developmental pathways. I reflect on how a developmental cascade perspective can help us understand the role of input and how development builds as the emergence and refinement of abilities changes the input and shapes the developmental pathways. Further, I emphasize that infants develop despite differences in the input, and that when studying infant development we should seriously consider the diversity of experience that infants encounter and how differences in experience (and input) shape the developmental cascade.