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Report

Plasticity’s Promise: Moving the Public Beyond the Container and Other Problematic Models

This report maps the gaps between how Americans think and experts talk about concepts of change over the life course, and brain change more specifically.
Author(s)
Nathaniel Kendall-Taylor, Abigail Haydon
Published
July 17, 2013
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The public brings a rich and complex set of cultural models to thinking about how people change. While some of these understandings are consonant with the science of developmental plasticity, others are distinctly at odds with scientific understandings of change. This report maps the gaps between how Americans think and experts talk about concepts of change over the life course, and brain change more specifically. These gaps represent specific challenges in communicating about developmental plasticity.