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A key goal of human neurodevelopmental research is to map neural and behavioral trajectories across both health and disease. A growing number of developmental consortia have begun to address this gap by providing open access to cross-sectional and longitudinal 'big data' repositories. However, it remains challenging to develop models that enable prediction of both within-subject and between-subject neurodevelopmental variation. Here, we present a conceptual and analytical perspective of two essential ingredients for mapping neurodevelopmental trajectories: state and trait components of variance. We focus on mapping variation across a range of neural and behavioral measurements and consider concurrent alterations of state and trait variation across development. We present a quantitative framework for combining both state- and trait-specific sources of neurobehavioral variation across development. Specifically, we argue that non-linear mixed growth models that leverage state and trait components of variance and consider environmental factors are necessary to comprehensively map brain-behavior relationships. We discuss this framework in the context of mapping language neurodevelopmental changes in early childhood, with an emphasis on measures of functional connectivity and their reliability for establishing robust neurobehavioral relationships. The ultimate goal is to statistically unravel developmental trajectories of neurobehavioral relationships that involve a combination of individual differences and age-related changes.

Functional near infrared spectroscopy relies on consistent and precise optode location and scalp morphology for accurate analyses. Herein, we present a scalp surface-based parcellation that compensates for variations in optode location and scalp morphology.

The delayed acquisition of Spanish ser and estar is generally understood as rooted in the cognitive demands imposed by the integration of semantic-pragmatic and world-knowledge factors associated with their lexical meanings. Here we ask (1) what is the nature of this language world-knowledge integration? and (2) what is the developmental trajectory including its age distribution? We examine Spanish copula production and comprehension in 142 children (age range: 4–12 years) and 26 adults. Using two tasks, sentence-choice (comprehension) and cued-production (production), we test the hypothesis that estar use is constrained by an ability to construe an alternative to the copula predication; an ability that develops with life experience. We test estar/ ser use in two contexts: alternative-supporting, favoring estar use; and alternative-neutral, neutral regarding estar use, and possibly favoring ser use. The results show that for comprehension, children do not reveal adult-level sensitivity to context, exhibiting instead over-selection of estar sentences. For production, all children over-produce the estar sentence, even after having just chosen the ser counterpart. However, in this task, the 10- to 12-year-olds do behave similarly to adults and differently from 4- to 6-year-olds, consistent with our hypothesis. Alternative construal requires exposure to entities and properties in a variety of situations; exposure that older children are more likely to exhibit. Collectively, these results (1) support the properties of estar use hypothesized to underlie the language-world-knowledge integration, and (2) delineate a potential developmental trajectory whereby mastery of the copula may not begin to manifest until 10–12 years of age, not because of any one linguistic factor but rather due to specific world-knowledge exposure constraints.

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