Developmental disorders and childhood learning difficulties encompass complex constellations of relative strengths and weaknesses across multiple aspects of learning, cognition, and behavior. Historically, debate in developmental psychology has been focused largely on the existence and nature of core deficits—the shared mechanistic origin from which all observed profiles within a diagnostic category emerge. The pitfalls of this theoretical approach have been articulated multiple times, but reductionist, core-deficit accounts remain remarkably prevalent. They persist because developmental science still follows the methodological template that accompanies core-deficit theories—highly selective samples, case-control designs, and voxel-wise neuroimaging methods. Fully moving beyond “core-deficit” thinking will require more than identifying its theoretical flaws. It will require a wholesale rethink about the way we design, collect, and analyze developmental data.

中文翻译：

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超越发育障碍的核心缺陷假说

发育障碍和儿童学习困难包括在学习、认知和行为的多个方面的相对优势和劣势的复杂星座。从历史上看，发展心理学的争论主要集中在核心缺陷的存在和性质上——这是一个共同的机制起源，诊断类别中所有观察到的特征都来自于这种起源。这种理论方法的缺陷已被多次阐明，但还原论的核心赤字账户仍然非常普遍。它们之所以存在，是因为发展科学仍然遵循核心缺陷理论的方法模板——高度选择性的样本、病例对照设计和体素神经成像方法。完全超越“核心赤字”思维需要的不仅仅是识别其理论缺陷。这将需要对我们设计、收集和分析发展数据的方式进行全面重新思考。