Perceptual Development

The aim of this book is both to reflect current knowledge of perceptual development and to point to some of the many questions that remain unanswered. The study of perceptual development is now a sophisticated science. The majority of the chapters tell a fascinating detective story: the way in which infants perceive and understand the world as they develop. Each of the major sections is prefaced by introductory comments, and the book will be useful for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers, and other professionals who have an interest in early perceptual development and in infancy in general.

First published in 1987. This book is not intended to be either a comprehensive reference work or a systematic handbook on perception in infancy. Nor is it another published report of a recently held conference. It is a collection of state-of-the-art essays on perception during the first year or so of infant development. Rather than first choosing the topics and then finding experts to write about them the editors first chose the experts and invited them to write about those topics in which we know them to be interested and closely involved. The outcome of this approach is a collection of chapters in which the authors at the same time critically review earlier contributions to the topic, report their own work, identify numerous unresolved problems and key issues, and point out directions for future inquiry. Naturally the emphasis placed on these facets varies markedly with both topic and author. The result is a collection of commentaries that we believe to be comprehensive, informative, interesting, and provocative.

Each year, the Institute of Child Development brings together a group of distinguished investigators who share a common desire to understand the nature of development. The chapters in this volume are based on papers presented at the 20th of this continuing series, the Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology. The meetings were held October 31 through November 2, 1985, at the University of Minnesota.

The essential nature of learning is primarily thought of as a verbal process or function, but this notion conveys that pre-linguistic infants do not learn. Far from being "blank slates" that passively absorb environmental stimuli, infants are active learners who perceptually engage their environments and extract information from them before language is available. The ecological approach to perceiving-defined as "a theory about perceiving by active creatures who look and listen and move around"-was spearheaded by Eleanor and James Gibson in the 1950s and culminated in James Gibson's last book in 1979. Until now, no comprehensive theoretical statement of ecological development has been published since Eleanor Gibson's Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development (1969). In An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development, distinguished experimental psychologists Eleanor J. Gibson and Anne D. Pick provide a unique theoretical framework for the ecological approach to understanding perceptual learning and development. Perception, in accordance with James Gibson's views, entails a reciprocal relationship between a person and his or her environment: The environment provides resources and opportunities for the person, and the person gets information from and acts on the environment. The concept of affordance is central to this idea; the person acts on what the environment affords, as it is appropriate. This extraordinary volume covers the development of perception in detail from birth through toddlerhood, beginning with the development of communication, going on to perceiving and acting on objects, and then to locomotion. It is more than a presentation of facts about perception as it develops. It outlines the ecological approach and shows how it underlies "higher" cognitive processes, such as concept formation, as well as discovery of the basic affordances of the environment. This impressive work should serve as the capstone for Eleanor J. Gibson's distinguished career as a developmental and experimental psychologist.

Perceptual and Cognitive Development illustrates how the developmental approach yields fundamental contributions to our understanding of perception and cognition as a whole. The book discusses how to relate developmental, comparative, and neurological considerations to early learning and development, and it presents fundamental problems in cognition and language, such as the acquisition of a coherent, organized, and shared understanding of concepts and language. Discussions of learning, memory, attention, and problem solving are embedded within specific accounts of the neurological status of developing minds and the nature of knowledge. Research advances and theoretical reorientations are updated in the Second Edition; the revision focuses more attention on the cognitive and biological sciences and neuroscience Illustrates how the developmental approach can yield fundamental contributions to our understanding of perception and cognition as a whole Discussions of learning, memory, and attention permeate individual chapters

Motor skills are a vital part of healthy development and are featured prominently both in physical examinations and in parents’ baby diaries. It has been known for a long time that motor development is critical for children’s understanding of the physical and social world. Learning occurs through dynamic interactions and exchanges with the physical and the social world, and consequently movements of eyes and head, arms and legs, and the entire body are a critical during learning. At birth, we start with relatively poorly developed motor skills but soon gain eye and head control, learn to reach, grasp, sit, and eventually to crawl and walk on our own. The opportunities arising from each of these motor milestones are profound and open new and exciting possibilities for exploration and interactions, and learning. Consequently, several theoretical accounts of child development suggest that growth in cognitive, social, and perceptual domains are influences by infants’ own motor experiences. Recently, empirical studies have started to unravel the direct impact that motor skills may have other domains of development. This volume is part of this renewed interest and includes reviews of previous findings and recent empirical evidence for associations between the motor domain and other domains from leading researchers in the field of child development. We hope that these articles will stimulate further research on this interesting question.

First published in 1987. This book is not intended to be either a comprehensive reference work or a systematic handbook on perception in infancy. Nor is it another published report of a recently held conference. It is a collection of state-of-the-art essays on perception during the first year or so of infant development. Rather than first choosing the topics and then finding experts to write about them the editors first chose the experts and invited them to write about those topics in which we know them to be interested and closely involved. The outcome of this approach is a collection of chapters in which the authors at the same time critically review earlier contributions to the topic, report their own work, identify numerous unresolved problems and key issues, and point out directions for future inquiry. Naturally the emphasis placed on these facets varies markedly with both topic and author. The result is a collection of commentaries that we believe to be comprehensive, informative, interesting, and provocative.