Developmental Science
Dear colleagues,
We are pleased to invite submissions for a forthcoming special issue on Culture, Context, and Brain Development in Developmental Science.
Developmental cognitive neuroscience has made remarkable progress in understanding experience-dependent brain development. However, environmental influences have often been conceptualized primarily in terms of adversity, deprivation, or pathology. This special issue aims to broaden that perspective by highlighting how the ordinary yet meaningful variation in cultural, linguistic, social, ecological, and socioeconomic environments shapes neurodevelopment across infancy, childhood, and adolescence.
We welcome empirical, theoretical, and review contributions that examine how diverse developmental contexts influence neurodevelopmental processes. We are particularly interested in work that advances context-sensitive theories of brain development, evaluates assumptions of universality, addresses methodological challenges in culturally diverse research, and integrates neural approaches with behavioral, computational, or ecological perspectives.
Topics include (but are not limited to):
- Sociocultural influences on neurocognitive development
- Cross-cultural and cross-contextual developmental neuroscience
- Language experience and brain development
- Socioeconomic and environmental variability in neurodevelopment
- Social interaction, caregiving, and neural development
- Experience-dependent neural plasticity in normative populations
- Measurement invariance and construct validity of neural measures across populations
- Theoretical advances concerning culture, context, and neurodevelopmental processes
- Computational or mechanistic models of environmentally structured development
We welcome empirical papers employing neurophysiological, neuroimaging, brain-behavioral, longitudinal, computational, and mixed-methods approaches, as well as meta-analyses, integrative reviews, and theoretically significant papers grounded in empirical evidence.
Important dates
- Abstract submission deadline: 31 August 2026
- Full manuscript submission deadline: 1 April 2027
The full Call for Papers, including submission instructions, is available here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.
We would be grateful if you would consider submitting your work and sharing this call with colleagues and trainees who may be interested. We are excited to assemble a collection of papers that advances our understanding of how diverse developmental environments shape the developing brain.
Please feel free to contact any of the guest editors with questions.
With best wishes,
Guest Editors
Dr. Heather Bortfeld
University of California, United States
Dr. Laura Katus
University of Greenwich, United Kingdom
Dr. Bruce Rawlings
Durham University, United Kingdom
Dr. Leher Singh
University of Maryland, United States