This up-to-date overview of the fast-moving field of infant development covers all the major areas of interest in terms of research, applications and policy. Provides an up-to-date overview of progress on important developmental questions relating to infancy. Balances North American and European perspective. Written by leading international researchers. Now available in full text online via xreferplus, the award-winning reference library on the web from xrefer. For more information, visit www.xreferplus.com

This multidisciplinary volume features many of the world's leading experts of infant development, who synthesize their research on infant learning and behaviour, while integrating perspectives across neuroscience, socio-cultural context, and policy. It offers an unparalleled overview of infant development across foundational areas such as prenatal development, brain development, epigenetics, physical growth, nutrition, cognition, language, attachment, and risk. The chapters present theoretical and empirical depth and rigor across specific domains of development, while highlighting reciprocal connections among brain, behavior, and social-cultural context. The handbook simultaneously educates, enriches, and encourages. It educates through detailed reviews of innovative methods and empirical foundations and enriches by considering the contexts of brain, culture, and policy. This cutting-edge volume establishes an agenda for future research and policy, and highlights research findings and application for advanced students, researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers with interests in understanding and promoting infant development.

The developing infant can accomplish all important perceptual tasks that an adult can, albeit with less skill or precision. Through infant perception research, infant responses to experiences enable researchers to reveal perceptual competence, test hypotheses about processes, and infer neural mechanisms, and researchers are able to address age-old questions about perception and the origins of knowledge. In Development of Perception in Infancy: The Cradle of Knowledge Revisited, Martha E. Arterberry and Philip J. Kellman study the methods and data of scientific research on infant perception, introducing and analyzing topics (such as space, pattern, object, and motion perception) through philosophical, theoretical, and historical contexts. Infant perception research is placed in a philosophical context by addressing the abilities with which humans appear to be born, those that appear to emerge due to experience, and the interaction of the two. The theoretical perspective is informed by the ecological tradition, and from such a perspective the authors focus on the information available for perception, when it is used by the developing infant, the fit between infant capabilities and environmental demands, and the role of perceptual learning. Since the original publication of this book in 1998 (MIT), Arterberry and Kellman address in addition the mechanisms of change, placing the basic capacities of infants at different ages and exploring what it is that infants do with this information. Significantly, the authors feature the perceptual underpinnings of social and cognitive development, and consider two examples of atypical development - congenital cataracts and Autism Spectrum Disorder. Professionals and students alike will find this book a critical resource to understanding perception, cognitive development, social development, infancy, and developmental cognitive neuroscience, as research on the origins of perception has changed forever our conceptions of how human mental life begins.

More than a decade has passed since the publication in 1975 of Cohen and Salapatek's compendium on infant perception. Since that time the field has grown considerably, with the result that where there were substantive omissions in many sub-areas of the field 10 years ago--such as developmental anatomy, effector mechanisms in vision, visual psychophysics, color perception, and cross-modal integration--it is possible now to8prepare new volumes in which topics ranging from sensory to cognitive processes are treated systematically without any glaring omissions. Hence, the Handbook of Infant Perception.**contributors are among the leading researchers in their fields**comprehensive coverage of the range of topics from sensation to cognition**coherent state-of-the-field presentation

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This Second Edition of the Handbook does much more than update the first edition; because the field of infancy has grown so much in recent years, and continues to grow, this volume now includes perspectives on many new issues. Covers issues such as the concept and influence of temperament, meaning of attachment relationships, continuities and discontinuities, infant mental health, media, society and child development. The Second Edition includes several European chapters, providing a review of infancy research from the Continent. Includes more clinical perspectives on infant development and discusses implications of the research for intervention and application.