Suor et al. () present a compelling new evolutionary framework that offers an alternative interpretation of the well-established findings of cognitive deficits in children raised in harsh early environments. They argue that such findings do not convey a complete picture of those children's cognitive development, because children's cognition becomes specialized to solve problems in fitness-enhancing ways, and traditional abstract problem-solving tasks do not fully capture their abilities. The authors demonstrate that children exposed to early harshness, particularly children with Hawk temperaments, preferentially shift cognition to salient fitness-enhancing stimuli, and thus develop better skills for solving reward-oriented tasks. This intriguing and heuristically generative study inspires multiple new research avenues, of which we outline three: (a) Further examination of the concept of harsh environments, (b) addressing questions about the conceptualization and the role of child temperament, and (c) further advances in the measurement of children's distinct skills.
© 2017 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.