A Developmental Perspective on Modularity

Abstract

The notion that the mind/brain is composed of independently functioning modules may hold to some extent for the adult brain, once it has become fully specialised or if it displays acquired domain-specific deficits when focal damage has occured. The extension of this thinking to typically and atypically developing infants in terms of innately specified, intact or impaired modules is not, however, warranted. This chapter discusses modularity from a developmental perspective and shows how specialisation and localisation of cognitive and brain function occurs very progressively over ontogenetic time. In other words, it argues for a gradual process of modularisation, not built-in modules.