‘But what is the mechanism?’: Demystifying the ever elusive ‘developmental mechanism’

Abstract

Few issues are more important to developmental scientists than understanding and elucidating mechanisms of developmental change. There are good reasons for this. For example, understanding how developmental change is produced allows developmental researchers to go beyond studying at what age an ability emerges to understanding the underlying processes by which those abilities develop in the first place. Yet, despite their importance, the term mechanism is not well understood. This lack of understanding is problematic because researchers and theorists can disagree and debate about what does and does not ‘count’ as mechanism research, which can slow scientific progress. Given this issue, this paper has three broad aims. The first aim was to provide a clear definition for one kind of developmental mechanism, namely, developmental mechanisms of cognitive change. The second aim is to provide a concrete example of a developmental mechanism and discuss how it works in detail, from start to finish. The third aim is to challenge the field to be more explicit about how their proposed developmental mechanisms work to ensure scientific progress.

Estimations of child linguistic productivity controlling for vocabulary and sample size

“…Capturing developmental mechanisms is a challenging task ( Benton, 2022 ). The present study systematises a new technique to examine changes in productivity at two levels: across participants, comparing the early use of language by children against their caregivers, and within participants, trying to detect developmental changes in the productive use of grammatical features.…”