In this response to the commentaries on the target article, “Where developmental psychology and neuroscience meet: A threatening or a felicitous encounter?” I address three nuclear topics. First, I make explicit some underlying assumptions that prevent us from reducing psychological to neurological phenomena. Second, I delve deeper into the relationships between neurological and psychological levels. In so doing, I describe some strengths and shortcomings of neuroimaging techniques in their attempt to analyse brain functioning. Finally, I add some evidence illustrating that Neuroscience can place the Nature/Nurture debate on more productive grounds.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
DawsonG.WebbS. J.WijsmanE.SchellenbergG.EstesA.MunsonJ.FajaS. (2005). Neurocognitive and electrophysiological evidence of altered face processing in parents of children with autism: Implications for a model of abnormal development of social brain circuitry in autism.Development and Psychopathology, 17, 679–697.
2.
HebbD. O. (1949). The organization of behavior. A neurophysiological theory.New York: Wiley.
3.
LogothetisN. K. (2008). What we can do and what we cannot do with fMRI.Nature, 453, 869–878.
RamachandranV. S.ObermanL. M. (2006). Broken mirrors. A theory of autism.Scientific American, 295, 62–69.
6.
TomaselloM. (2008). Origins of human communication.Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
7.
VulE.HarrisC.WinkielmanP.PashlerH. (2009). Puzzlingly high correlations in fMRI studies of emotion, personality, and social cognition.Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 274–290.
