Development from behaviour to brain and study design

For: Readers beginning developmental science who want to connect child and adult behaviour with questions about brain organisation and measurement.

What you will work towards

• Describe a developmental question without treating a historical theory as an individual timetable.
• Compare behavioural and brain-level observations of change.
• Identify task demands and recruitment features that affect interpretation.
• Propose an additional comparison that would distinguish explanations of a developmental difference.

Known viewing time: 4 hr 24 min across 4 steps; 2 step durations unknown. Lengths are metadata, not evidence of review.

Download the ordered reading list

1. 01

   MIT OpenCourseWare · Source-checked annotation

   Lecture 17: Child Development

   MIT OpenCourseWare · Speaker not established · foundation · 33 min

   Begin with concrete questions about infancy, learning and cognitive development before moving across explanatory levels.

   Try this

   Choose one ability from the session overview. Specify the task used to observe it and another demand that task places on the participant.

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2. 02

   Open Yale Courses · Source-checked annotation

   Lecture 5 - What Is It Like to Be a Baby: The Development of Thought

   Open Yale Courses · Speaker not established · foundation · Duration unknown

   Compare a second introductory course’s movement from Piaget to infant cognition rather than adopting the first presentation as the only possible framing.

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   Compare how the two lectures formulate a developmental question. Separate the historical theory from the kind of observation used to investigate it.

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3. 03

   MIT OpenCourseWare · Source-checked annotation

   Lecture 18: Adult Development

   MIT OpenCourseWare · Speaker not established · foundation · 1 hr 12 min

   Extend the question into adulthood so that development is considered across the lifespan.

   Try this

   Choose an adult-development question and explain whether a task used with younger participants would measure the same thing in the same way.

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4. 04

   MIT OpenCourseWare · Source-checked annotation

   Lecture 10: Development, Nature & Nurture I

   MIT OpenCourseWare · Nancy Kanwisher · intermediate · 1 hr 21 min

   Add cortical organisation as a different level of evidence about developmental change.

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   Write two proposed accounts involving genes and experience. Specify an observation that would help distinguish them for one narrowly defined question.

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5. 05

   MIT OpenCourseWare · Source-checked annotation

   Lecture 11: Development, Nature & Nurture II (2018)

   MIT OpenCourseWare · Nancy Kanwisher · intermediate · 1 hr 18 min

   Complete the paired neuroscience discussion and extend its question to change in adulthood.

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   Connect one question from the adult-development lecture to the brain-level discussion while stating what evidence would still be missing.

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6. 06

   MIT OpenCourseWare

   Using Lookit to Run Developmental Studies Online

   MIT OpenCourseWare · Speaker not established · Level not established · Duration unknown

   Finish with the practical setting of developmental measurement and who can participate.

   Try this

   Using the Lookit description, list a barrier online participation could reduce and a new sampling or measurement question it could introduce. Do not assume wider reach guarantees representativeness.

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A short starting route

Steps 1, 2, 3. The first three give two perspectives on childhood and an explicit extension into adulthood before introducing brain organisation.

Continue more deeply

Use the developmental guide’s paper exercise to compare two measures of one ability, then consult the Human Brain reading list for named studies behind its development lectures. Continue at source ↗

Limits of this route

The introductory courses are from 2007 and 2011; the Human Brain collection is from 2019, its second development video is labelled 2018, and the Lookit tutorial is dated 2020. Descriptions and selected teaching pages were inspected, not full videos or the current platform. This is an educational route, not an assessment of individual development or current clinical guidance.