Sense enables babies to perceive the physical and chemical changes that occur in the external environment. It occurs as a result of the dynamic interaction of sensory stimuli with sensory receptors in the eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and skin. The stimuli that newborns see, touch, and hear affect their brain development. The brain develops faster in…

Now in a second edition, this popular resource shows teachers and childcare providers how to work with young children based on current neuroscience research. Revised and expanded, it contains a wealth of practical and specific activities and materials to use with infants and toddlers to enhance growth and development. For each activity presented,…

We recently proposed a multi-channel, image-filtering model for simulating the development of visual selective attention in young infants (Schlesinger, Amso & Johnson, 2007). The model not only captures the performance of 3-month-olds on a visual search task, but also implicates two cortical regions that may play a role in the development of…

Infant brain development is a dynamic process dependent upon endogenous and exogenous stimulation and a supportive environment. A critical period of brain and neurosensory development occurs during the third trimester and into the "fourth" trimester (first three months of life). Disruption, damage, or deprivation in the infant's social and…

This paper reviews progress over the past 20 years in four areas of research on infant perception and cognition. Work on perception of dynamic events has identified perceptual constraints on perception of object unity and object trajectory continuity that have led to a perceptual account of early development that supplements Nativist accounts.…

When entering the Blind Childrens Center (BCC), what a person might not realize is that four of the five visually impaired children in a classroom share the same diagnosis of Optic Nerve Hypoplasia (OHN). ONH is the leading cause of blindness and visual impairment in young children. It is important that these children participate in an inclusive…

Used event-related potentials to determine whether infants show differences in spatial and temporal characteristics of brain activation during face and object recognition. Found that infants' experience with specific examples within categories and their general category knowledge influenced the neural correlates of visual processing. (Author/KB)

Maintains that one future direction for cognitive development research involves a closer integration with knowledge about the developing brain. Presents a framework for analyzing and interpreting postnatal functional brain development. Discusses three contributing hypotheses, within which a variety of phenomena associated with the neural basis of…

Examines current research on brain development, focusing on infants' ability to understand basic numerical concepts and arithmetic operations. Asserts that as the brain undergoes dramatic transformations, it already has a built-in capacity to understand basic numerical concepts. Recommends that parents and professionals engage in activities…

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that specific spatial and possibly temporal rates of change dominate early infants' looking, that these spatial and temporal events have meaningful and specific empirical correlates in neurophysiology as a function of age, and finally that neurophysiologically constrained models provide testable…