What’s Next? Advances and Challenges in Understanding How Environmental Predictability Shapes the Development of Cognitive Control

Abstract

Forming predictions about what will happen next in the world happens early in development, without instruction, and across species. Some environments support more accurate predictions. These more predictable environments also support what appear to be positive developmental trajectories, including increases in cognitive control over thoughts and actions. Such consequences of predictable environments have broad-reaching implications for society and have been explained across ecological, psychological, computational, and neural frameworks. However, many challenges remain in understanding the effects of environmental predictability, including adaptive responses to unpredictable environments and the mechanisms underlying the effects of predictable environments on developmental trajectories. Future work addressing different dimensions of predictability—across timescales, locations, actions, people, and outcomes—and their interactions will advance the ability to understand, predict, and support developmental trajectories.

Annual Research Review: The power of predictability – patterns of signals in early life shape neurodevelopment and mental health trajectories

“…Intriguingly, a handful of findings indicate that although exposures to unpredictability predict reduced effortful/inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility may be spared, or even enhanced following these exposures (Fields et al., 2021; Gillespie & Rao, 2022; Mittal, Griskevicius, Simpson, Sung, & Young, 2015; Rinne et al., 2022). The possibility that unpredictability affects executive function in targeted ways (by preserving or enhancing cognitive flexibility while impairing inhibitory/effortful control) is consistent with conceptual models emphasizing the role of ELA in shaping both risk and resilience in cognitive phenotypes and represents an important direction for future investigation (Belsky, Schlomer, & Ellis, 2012; Ellis & Del Giudice, 2019; Frankenhuis, Panchanathan, & Nettle, 2016; Munakata, Placido, & Zhuang, 2023; Mushtaq, Bland, & Schaefer, 2011). In sum, the emerging literature indicates that effortful/inhibitory control is particularly susceptible to unpredictability early in life.…”

“…These observations have important implications as poor effortful control is a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology, including risk for both internalizing and externalizing disorders (Beauchaine & Thayer, 2015;Joseph, McKone, Molina, & Shaw, 2021;Nigg, 2017;Santens et al, 2020) as well as poor physical health and decreased productivity and material success across the lifespan (Johnson, Voegtline, Ialongo, Hill, & Musci, 2022;Moffitt et al, 2011). Intriguingly, a handful of findings indicate that although exposures to unpredictability predict reduced effortful/inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility may be spared, or even enhanced following these exposures (Fields et al, 2021;Gillespie & Rao, 2022;Mittal, Griskevicius, Simpson, Sung, & Young, 2015;Rinne et al, 2022) preserving or enhancing cognitive flexibility while impairing inhibitory/effortful control) is consistent with conceptual models emphasizing the role of ELA in shaping both risk and resilience in cognitive phenotypes and represents an important direction for future investigation (Belsky, Schlomer, & Ellis, 2012;Ellis & Del Giudice, 2019;Frankenhuis, Panchanathan, & Nettle, 2016;Munakata, Placido, & Zhuang, 2023;Mushtaq, Bland, & Schaefer, 2011).…”

Early caregiver predictability shapes neural indices of statistical learning later in infancy

“…Such moment-to-moment predictability has been studied in multiple global contexts (although to our knowledge, not yet in an African setting, as we do here), implying the predictability of infants' early sensory input may be a globally-ubiquitous predictor of later development (Aran et al, 2024;Klein & Feldman, 2007;Montirosso et al, 2010). We reasoned that a mechanistic possibility explaining these links between cognitive development and caregiver predictability is that early experience with predictable information teaches infants to attend to (Munakata et al, 2023;Suarez-Rivera et al, 2019;Yu & Smith, 2016) and thus learn from predictable information, thereby shaping learning and memory systems in the brain while they are highly malleable.…”

Science of psychological phenomena and their testing.

“…In a similar vein, college students do the same things about half of the time day after day (Wood et al, 2002), indicating that routine patterns are sought for predictable living and psychological security as well as conserving energy. Predictable action-outcome pairings also facilitate learning and reward-maximizing responses (Munakata et al, 2023). Such a familiarity of behavioral patterns provides a base from which one can seek an individually optimal amount and type of variety in diverse ways on different days, prompted by internal and external conditions and factors.…”