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.

Synthesizing cutting-edge knowledge from multiple disciplines, 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. Key issues in assessment are addressed, including ways to measure both social function and brain function using developmentally sound tools. Balancing theoretical and clinical concerns, the book describes promising interventions for promoting children's adjustment and helping them participate more fully in the social world. Illustrations include six color plates.

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.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can seriously disrupt the social and communication skills that are basic requirements for everyday life. It is the loss of these interpersonal skills that can be the most devastating for people with TBI and their families. Although there are many books that focus upon TBI, none focus on communication and communication skills specifically. This book fills this important gap in the literature and provides information ranging from a broad overview of the nature of pathology following TBI and its effects on cognition and behaviour, through to the latest evidence about ways to assess and treat social and communication disorders. Much has changed in the field of communication disorders and TBI since the first edition of this book was published in 1999. There have been advances in neuroimaging, providing more accurate understanding of how the brain is damaged in TBI and also insights into its repair. There has been a burgeoning interest in social cognition, and advances in how communication is conceptualized, with a particular focus on the role of how context facilitates or impedes communicative ability. Most importantly, much has changed in the arena of rehabilitation. There is now a growing evidence base of treatments aimed at improving communication problems following TBI, new resources for accessing this information and renewed interest in different kinds of methods for demonstrating treatment effects. Bringing together a range of expert international researchers interested in understanding the nature and treatment of TBI this book covers topics from understanding how the brain damage occurs, how it affects social and communication skills and how these problems might be treated. As such it will be of great interest to clinicians, postgraduate and undergraduate students and researchers in neuropsychology, speech and language pathology.

Clinical Disorders of Social Cognition provides contemporary neuroscientific theories of social cognition in a wide range of conditions across the lifespan. Taking a trans-diagnostic approach to understanding these disorders, it discusses how they present in different conditions, ranging from brain injury to neurodevelopmental disorders, psychiatric conditions and dementia. Social cognitive disorders directly impact upon individuals’ work, leisure and social functioning. This book also collates and critiques the best and most useful assessment tools across the different disorders and coalesces research into intervention strategies across disorders to provide practical information about how such disorders can be assessed and treated so individuals can have meaningful, effective and satisfying social interactions. This book is essential reading for clinicians who work with people with clinical disorders and who are looking for new knowledge to understand, assess and treat their clients with social cognitive impairment. It will also appeal to students and professionals in clinical neuropsychology, speech and language pathology and researchers who are interested in learning more about the social brain and understanding how evidence from clinical conditions can inform this.

The Biological and Social Determinants of Child Development stimulates cross-disciplinary communication and research collaboration in the field of child development. While the papers in this issue seem diverse in terms of topic and discipline, there are a number of common themes: *critical period for brain development and the importance of specific environmental input during this period; *importance of early brain development and enriched environments is supported in articles describing findings from human studies; *potential for brain plasticity following specialized retraining is found in a compelling paper demonstrating different profiles of brain activation for normal readers vs. those who have dyslexia and younger children at high risk for development of reading disabilities; and *critical period, brain plasticity, and parallel changes in developing behavior and brain structure and functioning. As a number of papers in this issue describe potential interventions, one is relevant because it describes the numerous factors that make results of such studies have the potential to generalize to larger populations. Putting the described papers in a broad perspective, the last article argues that we cannot understand the health status of a society without understanding the health-determining influences across the life course.

The administration of psychological care to persons with brain disorders requires a series of skills that integrate the knowledge of clinical neuropsychology with developmental psychology, psychotherapy, rehabilitation, and the study of the humanities. In Clinical Neuropsychology and the Psychological Care of Persons with Brain Disorders, Dr. Prigatano describes his approach to this complex topic. He reviews some of the defining characteristics of human nature, and blends that discussion with an understanding of how the brain normally develops and declines with age. The psychological struggles of people at each stage of development are further described as different brain disorders occur at different times in development.