Dr Dean D'Souza

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

Background

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).

Research interests

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.

Areas of research supervision

• Typical and atypical neurocognitive development

Teaching

Dean is Course Leader of BSc Psychology with Criminology and Module Leader of Advanced Research Methods and Language and Thought.

Qualifications

• PhD Psychology (Birkbeck, University of London)
• MSc Cognitive Neuroscience (Birkbeck-UCL, University of London)
• BSc Psychology (Birkbeck, University of London)
• MA Philosophy (The Open University)

Memberships, editorial boards

• Fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (FCPS)
• Associate Research Fellow, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London
• Affiliated scientist, British Autism Study of Infant Siblings (BASIS) Network
• Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol), British Psychological Society
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Research grants, consultancy, knowledge exchange

Research grants

• 2018 The British Academy – Which attentional processes in infancy are most predictive of later developmental outcomes? Dean D'Souza, Michael Thomas, Emily Farran, Sarah Kuppen, & Hana D’Souza (£10,000.00)
• 2018 The Waterloo Foundation – What early processes in infancy are most predictive of later developmental outcomes in children with Down, fragile X, and Williams syndrome? Dean D'Souza, Michael Thomas, Emily Farran, Sarah Kuppen, & Hana D’Souza (£10,000.00)
• 2017 Better Data – Embodied language development: Using head-mounted cameras and LENA to understand word learning in atypically developing toddlers. Hana D'Souza & Dean D’Souza (£1,934.00)
• 2017 Autour des Williams – What early processes in infancy have the greatest impact on later developmental outcomes in children with Williams syndrome? Dean D'Souza, Hana D’Souza, Emily Farran, & Michael Thomas (£13,062.33)
• 2016 British Academy Small Grant – Raising bilingual children: the effects of exposure to a bilingual environment on cognitive development in infants. Dean D'Souza, Peter Bright, & Roberto Filippi (£9,900.00)
• 2014 Williams Syndrome Foundation – Neurocognitive studies on Williams syndrome. Dean D’Souza (£3,000.00)
• 2012 The Waterloo Foundation – Are early behavioural and neurophysiological markers syndrome-specific? A cross-syndrome comparison. Dean D'Souza, Hana D’Souza, Tim Smith, Gaia Scerif, & Annette Karmiloff-Smith (£32,200.00)
• 2012 Autour des Williams –Alterations in domain-relevant mechanisms constrain language acquisition in Williams syndrome by Dean D'Souza, Hana D’Souza, & Annette Karmiloff-Smith (£4,000.00)

Consultancy

• Families of the Williams Syndrome Foundation

Knowledge exchange

• 2013 Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience Fellowship, Lake Tahoe, California, USA
• 2012 The Visceral Mind, Bangor University, Wales
• 2011 Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience Fellowship, University of California at Santa Barbara, California, USA
• 2010 Cornell University Summer Institute Fellowship, Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, USA

Selected recent publications

D’Souza, D., & D’Souza, H. (in press). Bilingual adaptations in early development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 

D’Souza, D., Brady, D., Haensel, J. X., & D’Souza, H. (2021). Early bilingual experience is associated with change detection ability in adults. Scientific Reports, 11, 2068.  

D’Souza, D., & D’Souza, H. (in press). Bilingual adaptations in early development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 

D’Souza, D., Brady, D., Haensel, J. X., & D’Souza, H. (2021). Early bilingual experience is associated with change detection ability in adults. Scientific Reports, 11, 2068.

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. (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. (2019). A developmental approach to bilingual research: The effects of multi-language experience from early infancy to old age. International Journal of Bilingualism.

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 Preparation

D’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.

Recent presentations and conferences

Invited talks

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.

Conference Talks

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.

Media experience

Dean’s research has appeared in over 170 international and national news outlets (including popular science magazines such as Popular Science and BBC Science Focus Magazine and radio shows such asBBC Radio 4’s Inside Science and BBC World Service’s Science in Action). He wrote a blog (and commentaries) for The Guardian and contributes to The Conversation.