How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.

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From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with oth- ers and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality). Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: (1) the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and (2) a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The develop- mental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition.

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Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition

Part I: The Basic Account. 1. Language and Cognition: Constructing an Alternative Approach Within the Behavioral Tradition S.C. Hayes, et al. 2. Derived Relational Responding as Learned Behavior S.C. Hayes, et al. 3. Multiple Stimulus Relations and the Transformation of Stimulus Functions D. Barnes-Holmes, et al. 4. Relations Among Relations: Analogies, Metaphors, and Stories I. Stewart, et al. 5. Thinking, Problem-Solving, and Pragmatic Verbal Analysis S.C. Hayes, et al. 6. Understanding and Verbal Regulation D. Barnes-Holmes, et al. 7. Self and Self-Directed Rules D. Barnes-Holmes, et al. 8. Relational Frame Theory: A Precis S.C. Hayes, et al. Part II: Extensions and Applications. 9. Psychological Development Y. Barnes-Holmes, et al. 10. Education Y. Barnes-Holmes, et al. 11. Social Processes B. Roche, et al. 12. Psychopathology and Psychotherapy K.G. Wilson, et al. 13. Religion, Spirituality, and Transcendence D. Barnes-Holmes, et al. Epilogue. References. Index.

Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account Of Human Language And Cognition

A grammar of spoken Chinese = 中國話的文法

Many authors have speculated about a close relationship between vocal expression of emotions and musical expression of emotions. but evidence bearing on this relationship has unfortunately been lacking. This review of 104 studies of vocal expression and 41 studies of music performance reveals similarities between the 2 channels concerning (a) the accuracy with which discrete emotions were communicated to listeners and (b) the emotion-specific patterns of acoustic cues used to communicate each emotion. The patterns are generally consistent with K. R. Scherer's (1986) theoretical predictions. The results can explain why music is perceived as expressive of emotion, and they are consistent with an evolutionary perspective on vocal expression of emotions. Discussion focuses on theoretical accounts and directions for future research.

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Communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: different channels, same code?

This study compares the prosodic modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants in French, Italian, German, Japanese, British English, and American English. At every stage of data collection and analysis, standardized procedures were used to enhance the comparability across data sets that is essential for valid cross-language comparison of the prosodic features of parental speech. In each of the six language groups, five mothers and five fathers were recorded in semi-structured home observations while speaking to their infant aged 0;10-1;2 and to an adult. Speech samples were instrumentally analysed to measure seven prosodic parameters: mean fundamental frequency (f0), f0-minimum, f0-maximum, f0-range, f0-variability, utterance duration, and pause duration. Results showed cross-language consistency in the patterns of prosodic modification used in parental speech to infants. Across languages, both mothers and fathers used higher mean-f0, f0-minimum, and f0-maximum, greater f0-variability, shorter utterances, and longer pauses in infant-directed speech than in adult-directed speech. Mothers, but not fathers, used a wider f0-range in speech to infants. American English parents showed the most extreme prosodic modifications, differing from the other language groups in the extent of intonational exaggeration in speech to infants. These results reveal common patterns in caretaker's use of intonation across languages, which may function developmentally to regulate infant arousal and attention, to communicate affect, and to facilitate speech perception and language comprehension. In addition to providing evidence for possibly universal prosodic features of speech to infants, these results suggest that language-specific variations are also important, and that the findings of the numerous studies of early language input based on American English are not necessarily generalisable to other cultures.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0305000900010679

A cross-language study of prosodic modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants.

Intuitive parenting: A dialectic counterpart to the infant's integrative competence.

The study analyzes the meanings of melodic contours in maternal speech to 2-month-old infants in relation to eight interactional caregiving contexts and compares contour-context relations across tone and stress languages (Mandarin Chinese and American English). Ten American and 10 Chinese mother-infant pairs were recorded during spontaneous interactions in the laboratory. Maternal melodies were categorized by contour type and were subjected to digital acoustic analyses. Interactional caregiving contexts significantly influenced both the mothers' choice of contour types and the acoustic characteristics of individual contour types. American mothers raised their pitch and expanded pitch excursions more than Chinese mothers, but they used the same kinds of pitch contours to convey the same kinds of meanings in relation to the majority of contexts. The observed contour-context relations indicate basic contrasts of meaning and gradations along relevant dimensions of nonconscious parental care, such as arousing/soothing, turn-opening/turn-closing, approving/disapproving, and didactic modeling. The results suggest that melodic contours in parental communication with presyllabic infants represent cross-linguistic universals which may function as guiding messages in close relation to the parent's nonconscious didactic support of preverbal communication.

The meanings of melodies in motherese in tone and stress languages

Musical elements in the infant's vocalization: Their significance for communication, cognition, and creativity.

Part I. Systems of Communication: Introduction and Review U. Jurgens 1. Evolution of Vocal Communication D. Ploog 2. On the Neurobiology of Vocal Communication U. Jurgens 3. Vocal Affect Expression as Symbol, Symptom and Appeal K. R. Scherer Part II. Noncategorical and Categorical Symbols in Primate Communication: Introduction and Review K. Bard 4. Animal Signals: Motivational, Referential, or Both? P. Marler, Ch. Evans and M. Hauser 5. Noncategorical Vocal Communication in Subhuman Primates: The Example of Common Marmoset Phee Cells J. D. Newman and P. Goedeking 6. Categorical Vocal Signaling in Subhuman Primates M. J. Owren, R. M. Seyfarth and S. L. Hopp 7. Vocal Development in Nonhuman Primates D. Symmens and M. Biben Part III. Development of Nonverbal Vocal Signals in Humans: Part I. From Cry to Speech Sounds: Introduction and Review R. Eilers 8. No Language But a Cry B. M. Lester and C. Z. Boukydis 9. Development of Vocal Signaling in Human Infants: Toward a Methodology for Cross-Species Comparisons D. K. Oller and R. E. Eilers 10. Disorders of Vocal Signaling in Children H. Amorosa Part IV. Development of Nonverbal Vocal Signals in Humans: Part II. Interactive Support in Preverbal Dialogues: Introduction and Review R. Eilers 11. Early Ontogeny of Reciprocal Vocal Communication in Precanonical Parent-Infant Interactions M. Papousek 12. Didactic Interactions: Intuitive Parental Support of Vocal and Verbal Development in Human Infants H. Papousek and M. Bornstein 13. Meaningful Melodies in Mothers' Speech to Infants A. Fernald.

Mechthild Papoušek

Papers

A cross-language study of prosodic modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants.

Intuitive parenting: A dialectic counterpart to the infant's integrative competence.

The meanings of melodies in motherese in tone and stress languages

Musical elements in the infant's vocalization: Their significance for communication, cognition, and creativity.

Nonverbal vocal communication : comparative and developmental approaches