Special Section Developmental Social Cognitive Neuroscience

This volume in the JPS Series is intended to help crystallize the emergence of a new field, "Developmental Social Cognitive Neuroscience," aimed at elucidating the neural correlates of the development of socio-emotional experience and behavior. No one any longer doubts that infants are born with a biologically based head start in accomplishing their important life tasks––genetic resources, if you will, that are exploited differently in different contexts. Nevertheless, it is also true that socially relevant neural functions develop slowly during childhood and that this development is owed to complex interactions among genes, social and cultural environments, and children’s own behavior. A key challenge lies in finding appropriate ways of describing these complex interactions and the way in which they unfold in real developmental time. This is the challenge that motivates research in developmental social cognitive neuroscience. The chapters in this book highlight the latest and best research in this emerging field, and they cover a range of topics, including the typical and atypical development of imitation, impulsivity, novelty seeking, risk taking, self and social awareness, emotion regulation, moral reasoning, and executive function. Also addressed are the potential limitations of a neuroscientific approach to the development of social cognition. Intended for researchers and advanced students in neuroscience and developmental, cognitive, and social psychology, this book is appropriate for graduate seminars and upper-level undergraduate courses on social cognitive neuroscience, developmental neuroscience, social development, and cognitive development.

"Developmental cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary scientific field devoted to understanding psychological processes and their neurological bases during development, which has grown into a main discipline since its beginnings in the late 1980s. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience: An Introduction, has been the leading textbook over this time, and has evolved with the field over its previous four editions. The latest fourth edition was published in 2015. Since then, there has been major advancements in methods and analysis, application of the approach to clinical, educational and global health settings, and increasing longitudinal research focusing on understanding the mechanisms of development across the prenatal to early adulthood period. There is now a dire need for an updated edition to reflect these developments. The scope of this book is to provide an accessible introduction to the main methods, theories and empirical findings within developmental cognitive neuroscience in typical development from prenatal to early adulthood, focusing on human development, but including other comparative work that highlight relevant processes. The new edition will also cover research in clinical/medical populations, educational applications, and global health"--

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 4th Edition, is a revised and updated edition of the landmark text focusing on the development of brain and behaviour during infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Offers a comprehensive introduction to all issues relating to the nature of brain-behaviour relationships and development New or greatly expanded coverage of topics such as epigenetics and gene expression, cell migration and stem cells, sleep and learning/memory, socioeconomic status and development of prefrontal cortex function Includes a new chapter on educational neuroscience, featuring the latest findings on the application of cognitive neuroscience methods in school-age educational contexts Includes a variety of student-friendly features such as chapter-end discussion, practical applications of basic research, and material on recent technological breakthroughs

How we perceive and interpret the actions of others is crucial if we are to develop into healthy adults. It has even been argued that a lack of social cognitive skills lays a strong foundation for a variety of atypical developmental disorders, including autism. Fortunately, our understanding of how humans process and interpret each other's actions has increased by leaps and bounds in the past decade. At the vanguard of these encouraging developments has been groundbreaking research in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, and autism. Social Cognition: Development, Neuroscience and Autism is the first volume to fully integrate these areas of cutting-edge research on social cognition through contributions from some of the world's foremost experts in all three disciplines. The text is edited by distinguished development specialists who preface each section with chapter by chapter summaries that seamlessly link each of the contributing essays. Sections include related chapters on perspectives on social cognition, social cognition during infancy, social cognition and the adult brain, and social cognition: the challenge of autism. The text's final section serves as a commentary highlighting the fundamental issues that have been addressed in the text. Social Cognition: Development, Neuroscience and Autism is an indispensable addition to the rapidly expanding field of social cognition—and will provide valuable new insights on how we think and learn.

Recent years have seen an explosion of research into the physiological and neural bases of social behavior. This state-of-the science handbook is unique in approaching the topic from a developmental perspective. Exploring the dynamic relationship between biology and social behavior from infancy through adolescence, leading investigators discuss key processes in typical and atypical development. Chapters address emotion, motivation, person perception, interpersonal relationships, developmental disorders, and psychopathology. The volume sheds light on how complex social abilities emerge from basic brain circuits, whether there are elements of social behavior that are "hard wired" in the brain, and the impact of early experiences. Illustrations include 8 color plates.

This book explores the impact of acquired brain injury and developmental disabilities on children's emerging social skills. The editors present an innovative framework for understanding how brain processes interact with social development in both typically developing children and clinical populations. Anderson, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne.

This book comprises 26 exciting chapters by internationally renowned scholars, addressing the central psychological process separating humans from other animals: the ability to imagine the thoughts and feelings of others, and to reflect on the contents of our own mindsa theory of mind (ToM). The four sections of the book cover developmental, cultural, and neurobiological approaches to ToM across different populations and species. The chapters explore the earliest stages of development of ToM in infancy, and how plastic ToM learning is; why 3-year-olds typically fail false belief tasks and how ToM continues to develop beyond childhood into adulthood; the debate between simulation theory and theory theory; cross-cultural perspectives on ToM and how ToM develops differently in deaf children; how we use our ToM when we make moral judgments, and the link between emotional intelligence and ToM; the neural basis of ToM measured by evoked response potentials, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and studies of brain damage; emotional vs. cognitive empathy in neuropsychiatric conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, and psychopathy; the concept of self in autism and teaching methods targeting ToM deficits; the relationship between empathy, the pain matrix and the mirror neuron system; the role of oxytocin and fetal testosterone in mentalizing and empathy; the heritability of empathy and candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with empathy; and ToM in non-human primates. These 26 chapters represent a masterly overview of a field that has deepened since the first edition was published in 1993.