Vygotsky, disability and the problem of age: Understanding developmental difficulties of children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

The environment’s role in child development is central in all of Vygotsky’s theoretical works. This article explores the role of the environment in the production of developmental problems in children with disabilities. Using children with the genetic condition 22q11.2 DS syndrome as a concrete example, our aim is to advance the theoretical articulation by analyzing developmental incongruence in light of the pedological concept of periodization and its intersection with defectology studies. Drawing on central ideas from both traditions, we reinterpret biomedical research on children with 22q11.2 DS to highlight how developmental difficulties emerge from incongruence in the structural relations between the child and their environment. These incongruences generate a specific social situation of development characterized by disruptive contradictions, in which the demands, supports, and activities shaping the child’s development conflict with its current developmental level, producing distress and developmental arrest. We argue that the frequent psychopathology observed in this group is best understood as psychological neoformations arising from this structural contradiction between cultural-historical age periods and the child’s developmental needs, rather than as a direct consequence of the genetic condition itself.