The audacity of specificity: Moving adolescent developmental neuroscience towards more powerful scientific paradigms and translatable models

In this issue of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, two rticles revisit a pair of seminal models that have permeated develpmental neuroscience research focused on adolescence. Shulman nd colleagues (2016) “review, reappraise, and reaffirm” research elevant to dual-systems models of adolescent development, while elson and colleagues (2016) “expand and update” their proposal egarding the social reorientation model of adolescence and its nderlying neural circuitry. The present commentary aims to comlement these efforts with a constructive critique that leads to oncrete steps we believe can, and should, be taken to improve our odels and maximize cumulative scientific progress in the field. e propose here that for adolescent developmental neuroscience o be truly meaningful – and by this we mean precise enough to ot only make accurate and testable research predictions, but also e translatable into prevention, intervention, and policy programs hat will significantly improve developmental outcomes for adolesents – we need to refocus our priorities and enable our scientific odels to evolve.