U-shaped curves in development: A PDP approach

As the articles in this issue attest, U-shaped curves in development have stimulated a wide spectrum of research across disparate task domains and age groups and have provoked a variety of ideas about their origins and theoretical significance. In our view, the ubiquity of the general pattern suggests that U-shaped curves can arise from multiple factors, and that the various viewpoints represented herein may be useful for explaining some aspects of developmental change. In this spirit, we offer an additional way of thinking about such phenomena. Specifically, we suggest that U-shaped curves can arise within a domain-general learning mechanism as it slowly masters a domain characterized by statistical regularities and exceptions. This idea differs from those considered thus far, and may encompass many of the phenomena addressed by other views, three of which we outline briefly here. JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT, 1(5), 137–145 Copyright © 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.