2023/07/21 by Felipe Nogueira de Carvalho, Joel Krueger · 1 voice · 5 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Autism Spectrum Disorder Research #Behavioral and Psychological Studies #Child and Animal Learning Development
paper · doi:10.1080/09515089.2023.2237065
openalex publication_date 2023/07/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Niche construction theory highlights the active role of organisms in modifying their environment. A subset of these modifications is the developmental niche, which concerns ecological, epistemic, social and symbolic legacies inherited by organisms as resources that scaffold their developmental processes. Since in this theory development is a situated process that takes place in a culturally structured environment, we may reasonably ask if implicit cultural biases may, in some cases, be responsible for maladaptive developmental niches. In this paper we wish to argue for an affirmative answer. In order to do so, we first propose to conceptualize implicit bias as embodied perceptual habits, and then proceed to show that these habits are at least partially responsible for maladaptive developmental niches of children with Down syndrome and autism. With this framework we thus hope to bring together two fields of research that haven’t been explicitly connected: implicit bias and niche construction theory. Linking these two theories may bring benefits both to implicit bias researchers, who can extend this concept to characterize other sets of processes as biased, as well as to niche construction theorists, who will have a useful theoretical tool to diagnose maladaptive features of niches brought about by sociocultural biases.