Neuroscience techniques provide an open window previously unavailable to the origin of thoughts and actions in children. Developmental cognitive neuroscience is booming, and knowledge from human brain mapping is finding its way into education and pediatric practice. Promises of application in developmental cognitive neuroscience rests however on better theory-guided data interpretation. Massive amounts of neuroimaging data from children are being processed, yet published studies often do not frame their work within developmental models—in detriment, we believe, to progress in this field. Here we describe some core challenges in interpreting the data from developmental cognitive neuroscience, and advocate the use of constructivist developmental theories of human cognition with a neuroscience interpretation.

神经科学技术为了解儿童思想和行为的起源提供了一个以前无法打开的窗口。发展认知神经科学正在蓬勃发展，来自人脑图谱的知识正在进入教育和儿科实践。然而，发展认知神经科学的应用前景取决于更好的理论指导数据解释。来自儿童的大量神经影像数据正在被处理，但已发表的研究往往没有将他们的工作纳入发育模型——我们认为，这不利于该领域的进步。在这里，我们描述了解释发展认知神经科学数据的一些核心挑战，并提倡使用人类认知的建构主义发展理论和神经科学解释。