Bounded rationality and human development

Although multi-scale, multi-directional feedback between genes, brain, cognition, and behaviour is the cornerstone of well-evidenced interactionist models of human development (e.g., Gottlieb, 2007), contemporary theories of neurodevelopmental variation and disorder characteristically describe only unidirectional cascades across this hierarchy. To complement this view, I present a new theory of the cognitive and behavioural origins of individual differences in human development. This account is grounded in the ideas of restricted search and satisficing that are central to bounded rationality (Simon, 1955, 1956, 1990), and which set this account apart from claims that adaptive agents optimise utility functions or maximise their learning. Using the foundational model of bounded rationality (Simon, 1955) as a reference point, I integrate a broad contemporary literature on adaptive, restricted search and satisficing, and reciprocal influences on development and learning. This work motivates the novel position that, although adaptive, restricted search and satisficing not only amplify neurodevelopmental differences beyond their primary genetic and neurobiological origins but also provide a route by which disparate primary causal processes are anchored to common phenotypes. While the focus of this paper is on early developmental variation and conditions of clinical significance, I argue that bounded rationality offers a general paradigm through which to understand the emergence of individual differences across the lifespan, from psychopathology to expertise. The recommendation of this report is that cognitive and behavioural feedback should be embedded more widely into causal process models of the origins of individual differences in human development.