Developing developmental cognitive neuroscience: From agenda setting to hypothesis testing

In this issue of Developmental cognitive neuroscience Shulman nd colleagues (n.d.) and Nelson and colleagues (n.d.) present wo heuristic models of cognitive development. Shulman and coleagues review the current evidence in favor of dual systems (DS) odels, which suggests that enhanced risk taking in adolescents s the consequence of an imbalance between an early maturing otivational system involved in reward processing and a later aturing cognitive control system. They conclude with the viewoint that the current literature seems to reaffirm the usefulness f these models. In a similar fashion, Nelson and colleagues (n.d.) resented an updated version of the social information processing odel (SIP), a heuristic framework which links facets of social evelopment (ranging form infant caregiver interactions to intiate relationships during adolescence) with functional changes in he developing brain. Models are one of the central instruments of modern science e.g. the double helix model of DNA, the billiard ball model of a as, or the mind as a computer). However, not all models are alike nd different types of models serve different functions in the proess of scientific discovery (Frigg and Hartmann, 2006). The current odels of adolescent brain development, including the ones preented in this issue, are often labeled as heuristic models (Casey, 014; Crone and Dahl, 2012; Nelson et al., n.d.; Richards et al., 2013; hulman et al., n.d.). However, it is not always clear what heuristic odels are and what role they have. It is currently unclear if, and ow, different heuristic models can be meaningfully compared, or o what extend they aid the formulation of testable hypotheses. oreover, although there are many results that can be interpreted s being consistent with heuristic models, we will argue that such omparisons have only limited value and may even hamper further nvestigation of the underlying developmental mechanisms.