There has been much psychological and neurological work purporting to show that consciousness and self-awareness play no role in causing actions. The essays in this volume subject the assumptions that motivate such claims to sustained interdisciplinary scrutiny.

Presents a new framework for understanding language, thought, and experience, and for carrying out research.

Every child is born into a community, a society with a culture, in which they will live, grow and develop. Cultures lead to differences in children’s development, but equally important, culture is an essential component of every child’s psychological development. Taking a chronological approach, from prenatal development to adolescence, your knowledge of developmental psychology will grow with the child. To help you in your studies · Social, cognitive, emotional and physical aspects of development are interwoven to help you connect the material · You can read case studies from across the globe to enable you to compare cultures · Key research studies are highlighted to help you get to grips with the theory · You’ll be encouraged to ‘Stop and think’ and engage your critical skills You can also access revision tools online. In this new edition we′ve reduced the number of chapters so it covers only what you need to know and we′ve added a glossary to help with understanding. This textbook is essential reading for undergraduate students taking an introductory course in child development or developmental psychology.

An exciting introduction to the scientific interface between biological studies of the brain and behavioural studies of human development. The authors trace the field from its roots in developmental psychology and neuroscience, and highlight some of the most persuasive research findings before anticipating future directions the field may take. They begin with a brief orientation of the brain, along with genetics and epigenetics, and then summarise brain development and plasticity. Later chapters detail the neurodevelopmental basis of a wide variety of human competencies, including perception, language comprehension, socioemotional development, memory systems, literacy and numeracy, and self-regulation. Suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in developmental cognition or neuroscience, this textbook covers the prenatal period through to infancy, childhood, and adolescence. It is pedagogically rich, featuring interviews with leading researchers, learning objectives, review questions, further-reading recommendations, and numerous colour figures. Instructor teaching is supported by lecture slides and a test bank.

This anthology is a compilation of the best contributions from Symbolic Species Conferences I, II (which took place in 2006, 2007). In 1997 the American anthropologist Terrence Deacon published The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain. The book is widely considered a seminal work in the subject of evolutionary cognition. However, Deacons book was the first step – further steps have had to be taken. The proposed anthology is such an important associate. The contributions are written by a wide variety of scholars each with a unique view on evolutionary cognition and the questions raised by Terrence Deacon - emergence in evolution, the origin of language, the semiotic 'missing link', Peirce's semiotics in evolution and biology, biosemiotics, evolutionary cognition, Baldwinian evolution, the neuroscience of linguistic capacities as well as phylogeny of the homo species, primatology, embodied cognition and knowledge types.

The sense of agency is defined as the sense of oneself as the agent of one's own actions. This also allows oneself to feel distinct from others, and contributes to the subjective phenomenon of self-consciousness (Gallagher, 2000). Distinguishing oneself from others is arguably one of the most important functions of the human brain. Even minor impairments in this ability profoundly affect the individual’s functioning in society as demonstrated by psychiatric and neurological syndromes involving agency disturbances (Della Sala et al., 1991; Franck et al., 2001; Frith, 2005; Sirigu et al., 1999). But the sense of agency also plays a role for cultural and religious phenomena such as voodoo, superstition and gambling, in which individuals experience subjective control over objectively uncontrollable entities (Wegner, 2003). Furthermore, it plays into ethical and law questions concerning responsibility and guilt. For these reasons a better understanding of the sense of agency has been important for neuroscientists, clinicians, philosophers of mind and the general society alike. Significant progress has been made in this regard. For example, philosophical scrutiny has helped establish the conceptual boundaries of the sense of agency (Bayne, 2011; Gallagher, 2000, 2012; Pacherie 2008; Synofzik et al., 2008) and scientific investigations have shed light on the neurocognitive basis of sense of agency including the brain regions supporting sense of agency (Chambon et al., 2013; David et al., 2007; Farrer et al., 2003, 2008; Spengler et al., 2009; Tsakiris et al., 2010; Yomogida et al., 2010). Despite this progress there remain a number of outstanding questions such as: • Are there cross-cultural differences in the sense of agency? • How does the sense of agency develop in infants or change across the lifespan? • How does social context influence sense of agency? • What neural networks support sense of agency (i.e., connectivity and communication between brain regions)? • What are the temporal dynamics with respect to neural processes underlying the sense of agency (i.e. the what and when of agency processing)? • How can different cue models of the sense of agency be further specified and empirically supported, especially with regards to cue integration/ weighting? • What are the applications of sense of agency research (clinically, engineering etc.)? The concept of the sense of agency offers intriguing avenues for knowledge transfer across disciplines and interdisciplinary empirical approaches, especially in addressing the afore-mentioned outstanding questions. The aim of the present research topic is to promote and facilitate such interdisciplinarity for a better understanding of why and how we typically experience our own actions so naturally and undoubtedly as “ours” and what goes awry when we do not. We, thus, welcome contributions from, for example, (i) neuroscience and psychology (including development psychology/ neuroscience), (ii) psychiatry and neurology, (iii) philosophy, (iv) robotics, and (v) computational modeling. In addition to empirical or scientific studies of the sense of agency, we also encourage theoretical contributions including reviews, models, and opinions.

Developmental Science: An Advanced Textbook is the most complete and cutting-edge introduction to the field available today. Since its initial publication, the key purpose of the text has been to furnish inclusive developmental perspectives on all substantive areas in psychology—neuroscience, perception, cognition, language, emotion, and social interaction. This edition is no exception, as it continues to underscore the dynamic and exciting status of contemporary developmental science. In this Seventh Edition, Marc H. Bornstein and Michael E. Lamb once again invite international experts to prepare original, comprehensive, and topical treatments of the major areas of developmental science, which are masterfully woven into a single coherent volume. Some chapters in this edition are new, and those carried forward from the sixth edition have been extensively revised. This volume represents faithfully the current status of scholarly efforts in all aspects of developmental science. Ideal for advanced undergraduate and introductory graduate courses, the text is accompanied by a website with supplementary material for students and instructors, including chapter outlines, topics to think about before reading, glossaries, and suggested readings.