Impacting readiness: Nature and nurture

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I first got seriously interested in 'brain readiness' many years ago, when, as a psychologist-in-training, I was asked to conduct admissions observations and testing for a private preschool. I readily observed what any teacher knows — that even though the children were all near the same chronological age, their developmental readiness was, quite literally, all over the charts. Whereas some four year olds could draw a person with five fingers on each hand and a full set of facial features, others could barely hold a pencil. Some sat quietly in a small group, intently listening to and understanding a story, while others wiggled, fidgeted, and couldn't focus their attention.

In those days, before the explosion of developmental neuroscience, my professors explained individual differences in readiness with the term 'neural ripening,' a catchphrase for the notion that individuals' developmental timetables differed biologically — and that there wasn't much we could do about it. ...