Faculty:Faculty of Science and Engineering
School:Psychology and Sport Science
Location: Cambridge
Areas of Expertise: Brain & Cognition
Research Supervision:Yes
Dean is interested in various aspects of brain and cognitive development in both typically developing infants/toddlers and those with neurodevelopmental disorders (autism, Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, Williams syndrome).
dean.dsouza@aru.ac.uk
Find out more about Dean’s research via the ELAN lab
Before joining ARU in 2017, Dean was studying atypical development at Birkbeck, University of London, and investigating the effects of bilingualism on brain and cognitive development at UCL.
For his PhD, which he completed under the supervision of Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith and Professor Mark Johnson at Birkbeck’s Centre for Brain & Cognitive Development, Dean investigated early cognitive and neurophysiological processes that underlie language development in infants at high risk of developing autism and children with different neurodevelopmental disorders (Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, Williams syndrome).
Dean is interested in typical and atypical neurocognitive development. He is particularly interested in understanding how early language and cognitive abilities emerge in typically and atypically developing populations, by studying the interplay of various factors (eg visual attention, multimodal integration, parent-child interaction) across domains, modalities, and levels of description, over developmental time.
Find out more about our Psychology PhD.
Dean is Course Leader of BSc Psychology with Criminology and Module Leader of Advanced Research Methods and Language and Thought.
Research grants
Consultancy
Knowledge exchange
D’Souza, H., & D’Souza, D. (in press). The emerging phenotype in infants with Down syndrome: Adaptations to atypical constraints. In J. A. Burack, J. Edgin, & L. J. Abbeduto (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Down Syndrome and Development. New York: Oxford University Press.
D’Souza, D., Brady, D., Haensel, J. X., & D’Souza, H. (in press). Early bilingual experience is associated with change detection ability in adults. Scientific Reports.
D’Souza, D., D’Souza, H., Jones, E. J. H., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2020). Attentional abilities constrain language development: A cross-syndrome infant/toddler study. Developmental Science, 23(6), e12961.
D’Souza, D., Brady, D., Haensel, J. X., & D’Souza, H. (2020). Is mere exposure enough? The effects of bilingual environments on infant cognitive development. Royal Society Open Science, 7(2), 7180191.
D’Souza, D., D’Souza, H., Horvath, K., Plunkett, K., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2020). Sleep is atypical across neurodevelopmental disorders in infants and toddlers: A cross-syndrome study. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 97, 103549.
D’Souza, D., & D’Souza, H. (2019). Emergent and constrained: Understanding brain and cognitive development. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 49, 228-231.
Filippi, R., D’Souza, D., & Bright, P. (2018). A developmental approach to bilingual research: The effects of multi-language experience from early infancy to old age. International Journal of Bilingualism. Prepublished January 1, 2018, DOI: 10.1177/1367006917749061
D’Souza, D., & Filippi, R. (2017). Progressive modularization: reframing our understanding of typical and atypical language development. First Language, 37, 518-529.
D’Souza, D., D’Souza, H., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2017). Precursors to language development in typically and atypically developing infants and toddlers: the importance of embracing complexity. Journal of Child Language, 44, 591-627.
Soukup-Ascençao, T., D’Souza, D., D’Souza, H., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2016). Parent-child interaction as a dynamic contributor to learning and cognitive development in typical and atypical development. Infancia y Aprendizaje, 39, 694-726.
D’Souza, D., D’Souza, H., Johnson, M. H., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2016). Audio-visual speech perception in infants and toddlers with Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, and Williams syndrome. Infant Behavior and Development, 44, 249-262.
D’Souza, D., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2016). Why a developmental perspective is critical for understanding human cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, e122.
D’Souza, D., & D’Souza, H. (2016). Bilingual language control mechanisms in anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: A developmental perspective. The Journal of Neuroscience, 36, 5434-5436.
D’Souza, D., Booth, R., Connolly, M., Happé, F., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2016). Rethinking the concepts of ‘local or global processors’: Evidence from Williams syndrome, Down syndrome, and Autism Spectrum Disorders. Developmental Science, 19, 452-468.
D’Souza, D., D’Souza, H., Johnson, M. H., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2015). Concurrent relations between face scanning and language: A cross-syndrome infant study. PLOS ONE, 10, e0139319.
D’Souza, D., Cole, V., Farran, E. K., Brown, J. H., Humphreys, K., Howard, J., Rodic, M., Dekker, T. M., D’Souza, H., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2015). Face processing in Williams syndrome is already atypical in infancy. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 760.
[Also included (pp. 60-68) in: Meinhardt-Injac, B., & Hildebrandt, A. (Eds.). (2017). Face perception across the life-span. Lausanne: Frontiers Media.]
Arzi, A., Banerjee, S., Cox, J. C., D’Souza, D., et al. (2014). The significance of cognitive neuroscience: Findings, applications, and challenges. In M. S. Gazzaniga & G. R. Mangun (Eds.), The Cognitive Neurosciences (5th Ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Karmiloff-Smith, A., D’Souza, D., Dekker, T. M., Van Herwegen, J., Xu, F., Rodic, M., & Ansari, D. (2012). Genetic and environmental vulnerabilities in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109, 17261-17265.
Karmiloff-Smith, A., Broadbent, H., Farran, E. K., Longhi, E., D’Souza, D., Metcalfe, K., Tassabehji, M., Wu, R., Senju, A., Happé, F., Turnpenny, P., & Sansbury, F. (2012). Social cognition in Williams syndrome: Genotype/phenotype insights from partial deletion patients. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 168.
D’Souza, D., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2011). When modularization fails to occur: A developmental perspective. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 28, 276-287.
Manuscripts in PreparationD’Souza, D., D’Souza, H., Johnson, M. H., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (in prep). Visual orienting constrains language development: A cross-syndrome infant/toddler study.
D’Souza, D., D’Souza, H., Johnson, M. H., Gliga, T., Guiraud, J., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (in prep). Cognitive and neurophysiological predictors of language development in infants with Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, and Williams syndrome.
D’Souza, D., D’Souza, H., Johnson, M. H., Gliga, T., Guiraud, J., & Karmiloff-Smith (in prep). Neural habituation as a predictor of language development: Insights from a cross-syndrome design.
D’Souza, D. (2020, June). Understanding constraints on early language and cognitive development. Rising Stars Seminar Series, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, U.K.
D’Souza, D. (2020, March). Understanding constraints on early language and cognitive development. Bangor University, Bangor, U.K.
D’Souza, D., Brady, D., Haensel, J. X., & D’Souza, H. (2020, October). Bilingual infants disengage faster and switch attention more frequently than monolingual infants. Many Paths to Language (MPaL), Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Dean’s research has appeared in over 100 international and national news outlets (including BBC Science Focus Magazine and BBC World Service). He wrote a blog (and commentaries) for The Guardian and contributes to The Conversation.