Theories of Infant Development Theories of Infant Development Edited by Gavin Bremner and Alan Slater © 2004 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization © 2004 by Gavin Bremner and Alan Slater 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Gavin Bremner and Alan Slater to be identified as the Authors of the Editorial Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2004 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Theories of infant development / edited by Gavin Bremner and Alan Slater. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–631–23337–7 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 0–631–23338–5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Infants—Development. 2. Child development. I. Bremner, J. Gavin, 1949– II. Slater, Alan. RJ134.T48 2003 305.232—dc21 2003045328 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 10/12 pt Palatino by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com In memory of George Esmond Butterworth, November 8, 1946–February 12, 2000 Contents Contributors ix Preface xi Part I Development of Perception and Action 1 A Dynamical Systems Perspective on Infant Action and its Development 3 Eugene C. Goldfield and Peter H. Wolff 2 A Developmental Perspective on Visual Proprioception 30 David I. Anderson, Joseph J. Campos, and Marianne A. Barbu-Roth 3 From Direct Perception to the Primacy of Action: A Closer Look at James Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Psychology 70 Alan Costall 4 The Development of Perception in a Multimodal Environment 90 Lorraine E. Bahrick 5 Neuroscience Perspectives on Infant Development 121 Mark H. Johnson and Annette Karmiloff-Smith Part II Cognitive Development 6 The Case for Developmental Cognitive Science: Theories of People and Things 145 Andrew N. Meltzoff viii Contents 7 Theories of Development of the Object Concept 174 Scott P. Johnson 8 Remembering Infancy: Accessing Our Earliest Experiences 204 Alan Fogel Part III Social Development and Communication 9 Maternal Sensitivity and Infant Temperament in the Formation of Attachment 233 Marinus H. van IJzendoorn and Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg 10 Emerging Co-Awareness 258 Philippe Rochat 11 Processes of Development in Early Communication 284 David Messer 12 Joint Visual Attention in Infancy 317 George Butterworth Afterword: Tribute to George Butterworth 355 Peter E. Bryant Author Index 362 Subject Index 374 Contributors David I. Anderson, San Francisco State University and Univer- sity of California, Berkeley, USA. Lorraine E. Bahrick, Florida International University, USA. Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg, Leiden University, The Netherlands. Marianne A. Barbu-Roth, Laboratoire de PsychoBiologie du Développement, CNRS, EPHE, Paris, France. Gavin Bremner, Lancaster University, UK. Peter E. Bryant, University of Oxford, UK. George Butterworth, deceased. Joseph J. Campos, University of California, Berkeley, USA. Alan Costall, University of Portsmouth, UK. Alan Fogel, University of Utah, USA. Eugene C. Goldfield, Children’s Hospital, Carnegie 2, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, USA. Mark H. Johnson, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. Scott P. Johnson, Cornell University, USA. Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Neurocognitive Development Unit, Institute of Child Health, London, UK. Andrew N. Meltzoff, University of Washington, USA. David Messer, South Bank University, London, UK. Philippe Rochat, Emory University, USA. Alan Slater, University of Exeter, UK. Marinus H. van IJzendoorn, Leiden University, The Netherlands. Peter H. Wolff, Children’s Hospital, Carnegie 2, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, USA. Preface Following George Butterworth’s tragic and untimely death in February 2000, there was a widespread feeling that something should be done to commemorate his life and contribution to developmental psychology. This is one attempt to do so. Given George’s strong interest in the development of theory, our first thought was of a book on theories of infant development. We are most grateful to Blackwell Publishing for supporting us in this endeavor, and we hope that the result is a fitting tribute to George Butterworth’s work. The volume and diversity of research on human infancy has grown enormously over the past 40 years. Back in the 1960s a small group known as Correspondents on Research in Infancy began meeting, and from this grew the International Society for Infant Studies, whose biennial conference attracts 1,000 or more participants from all over the world making over 750 research presentations. As a consequence, what we know about the in- fant’s perceptual, cognitive, social, and emotional development has advanced significantly. Additionally, new theoretical accounts have emerged and old accounts have been modified and reevaluated. Recently in particular, and in a number of areas, vigorous de- bate has arisen concerning the appropriate theoretical frameworks through which to explain infant development, and it appeared to us that this was a particularly good time to put together a book that focused specifically on theory. Thus we asked prominent individuals in a variety of areas across the breadth of the disci- pline to write chapters that concentrated on specific theoretical accounts or particular theoretical controversies within their area of expertise. Given the constraints on length, we had to be xii Preface relatively selective in our coverage, and so we aimed to identify authors who would address theoretical issues that are currently at the heart of debate. The book is in three parts. Part I covers the development of perception and action. The first chapter in this section is by Goldfield and Wolff, who explore the contribution of dynamical systems theory to our understanding of infant development. Dynamical systems theory is now being applied to a wide range of developmental issues in infancy, and here we see it applied to the development of infant action, the topic that it has probably been most successful in clarifying. In the second chapter, Anderson, Campos, and Barbu-Roth tackle the relationship be- tween perception and action from a rather different perspective. The term “visual proprioception” stems from Gibson’s theory of direct perception, and in this chapter the authors look at the development of perception–action coupling, considering both how visual information is used to control posture and locomotion and how the development of locomotion leads to changes in visual proprioception. Following this chapter, there are two chapters that focus specifically on the ecological theory of J. J. Gibson. Costall provides a scholarly analysis of this theoretical approach, while Bahrick explores the development of multimodal percep- tion which has its theoretical underpinnings firmly in Gibsonian theory. In the final chapter in Part I, Johnson and Karmiloff- Smith provide a neuroscience perspective, indicating how this approach can help to elucidate issues regarding both typical and atypical development in infancy. The first two chapters of Part II offer contrasting perspectives on the Piagetian account of cognitive development and the more recent theories, such as neo-nativism, that have followed in its wake. Meltzoff makes the case for a developmental cognitive science that suggests how initial innate representations are modi- fied by learning processes during development. This differs from strong nativist accounts in attributing less to innate factors, and also differs from Piagetian and dynamical systems accounts by arguing that representations can be developed through observa- tion as well as action. Johnson presents a rather different account that stresses the importance of early perceptual and memory skills as underpinnings for cognitive development. Thus, emergence of the object concept depends on the development of earlier perceptual skills as well as on experience and learning about objects at a cognitive level. The final chapter in this section shifts the focus to infant memory. In addition to the distinction be- tween implicit and explicit memory, Fogel identifies the need to Preface xiii recognize a third form of memory in infancy, participatory memory, which involves reliving past experiences in the present. Participatory memories are fundamentally emotionally based and are often cued by a similar context in the present as accompanied the original experience. The focus on emotion makes this a good link chapter to the final part of the book. Part III concerns social and communicative development. In the first chapter of this section Van IJzendoorn and Bakermans- Kranenburg consider attachment theory. Here they review the causal factors in attachment formation, focusing specifically on maternal sensitivity and infant temperament and concluding that the former is more important as a cause in attachment formation than the latter. The focus on emotion continues in Rochat’s chap- ter on the emergence of co-awareness.