Over the past three decades mounting evidence has suggested that infants’ social perceptual and social cognitive abilities are considerably richer than was once thought. By the end of the second year of life, infants discriminate faces along various social dimensions, attend to and understand others’ goals and intentions, use the emotions of others to guide their learning and behavior, attribute dispositional characteristics to other agents, and make basic social evaluations. What has also become clear is that there is a great deal of variability in infants’ social perception and cognition. A critical, outstanding question concerns the nature and meaning of such variability. The proposed Research Topic welcomes papers addressing cutting-edge questions regarding variability and individual differences in early social perception and social cognition. The goal of these papers is to investigate overarching questions in this domain, which are necessary to move the field forward. Variability in early social perception and social cognition (among other domains) in infancy and early childhood is often attributed to noise, or overlooked in favor of focusing on age-related changes. Yet, recent work suggests that variability in social perceptual and social cognitive tasks reliably inter-relates, and predicts real-world social behaviors. For example, infants’ everyday experience with different face categories predicts individual differences in face processing, infants’ production of goal-directed actions predicts their simultaneous understanding of these actions, and variability in social attention during the second year of life is related to theory of mind during the preschool years. These findings suggest that variability in performance on social perception and social cognition tasks is not merely a nuisance variable, but, rather, may provide the key to addressing significant questions regarding the nature of infants’ social perception and social cognition, and the processes that underlie developmental change. Acknowledging and closely examining and investigating variability in early social perceptual and social cognitive abilities may represent a powerful approach for understanding development in (at least) two ways. First, variability can signal transitional points in the developmental onset of a given ability. Thus, such variability, and the extent to which variability relates to experience and/or other abilities, can be used to test hypotheses regarding mechanisms that underlie developmental changes. Second, variability can represent more enduring individual differences between infants. In this case, critical questions arise regarding the source of individual differences (that is, what factors shape the emergence of individual differences?) and whether such early individual differences contribute to the development of more advanced and sophisticated forms of social cognition and behavior. The goal of this Research Topic will be to encourage researchers to take variability in early social perception and cognition seriously. Papers that give variability center stage, and are aimed at addressing the value of variability for identifying developmental mechanisms, as well as investigating the existence, source, and antecedents of early individual differences in social perception and social cognition are welcomed. Taken together, the contributed papers will provide integral new information to the study of social perception and social cognition over the first three years of life.

Developmental research has long focused on regularities in language acquisition, minimizing factors that might be responsible for variation. Although researchers are now increasingly concerned with one or another of these factors, this volume brings together research on three different sources of variation: language-specific properties, the nature of the input to children across contexts, and several aspects of the learners themselves. Chapters explore these sources of variation within an interdisciplinary and comparative approach allying theories and methodologies stemming from linguistics, psycholinguistics, developmental psychology, and neuroscience. The comparative perspective involves different languages, contexts of use, types of learners (first/second language acquisition, monolingual/bilingual learners, autism, language impairment), as well as vocal and visuo-gestural communicative modalities (co-verbal gestures, sign language acquisition). The volume points to the need to enhance interdisciplinary research using complementary methodologies to further examine sources of variation and to integrate variation into a more general developmental theory.

Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development, Second Edition, provides a comprehensive entry point into the existing literature on child development in the fields of psychology, genetics, neuroscience and sociology. Featuring 171 chapters, across 3 volumes, this work helps readers understand these developmental changes, when they occur, why they occur, how they occur, and the factors that influence development. Although some medical information is included, the emphasis lies mainly in normal growth, primarily from a psychological perspective. Comprehensive and in-depth scholarly articles cover theoretical, applied and basic science topics, providing an interdisciplinary approach. All articles have been completely updated, making this resource ideal for a wide range of readers, including advanced undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and clinicians in developmental psychology, medicine, nursing, social science and early childhood education. Cutting-edge content that cover the period of neonates to age three Organized alphabetically by topic for ease of reference Provides in-depth scholarly articles, covering theoretical, applied and basic science Includes suggested readings at the end of each article

This volume showcases the current state of the art in phonologization research, bringing together work by leading scholars in sound change research from different disciplinary and scholarly traditions.

This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact.

This comprehensive overview presents cutting-edge research on the fast-expanding field of interpersonal perception.

Social Cognition brings together diverse and timely writings that highlight cutting-edge research and theories on the development of social cognition and social behavior across species and the life span. The volume is organized according to two central themes that address issues of continuity and change both at the phylogenetic and the ontogenetic level. First, it addresses to what extent social cognitive abilities and behaviors are shared across species, versus abilities and capacities that are uniquely human. Second, it covers to what extent social cognitive abilities and behaviors are continuous across periods of development within and across the life span, versus their change with age. This volume offers a fresh perspective on social cognition and behavior, and shows the value of bringing together different disciplines to illuminate our understanding of the origins, mechanisms, functions, and development of the many capacities that have evolved to facilitate and regulate a wide variety of behaviors fine-tuned to group living.

Donald R. McCreary and Joan C. Chrisler The Development of Gender Studies in Psychology Studies of sex differences are as old as the ?eld of psychology, and they have been conducted in every sub?eld of the discipline. There are probably many reasons for the popularity of these studies, but three reasons seem to be most prominent. First, social psychological studies of person perception show that sex is especially salient in social groups. It is the ?rst thing people notice about others, and it is one of the things we remember best (Fiske, Haslam, & Fiske, 1991; Stangor, Lynch, Duan, & Glass, 1992). For example, people may not remember who uttered a witty remark, but they are likely to remember whether the quip came from a woman or a man. Second, many people hold ?rm beliefs that aspects of physiology suit men and women for particular social roles. Men’s greater upper body strength makes them better candidates for manual labor, and their greater height gives the impression that they would make good leaders (i. e. , people we look up to). Women’s reproductive capacity and the caretaking tasks (e. g. , breastfeeding, baby minding) that accompany it make them seem suitable for other roles that require gentleness and nurturance. Third, the logic that underlies hypothesis testing in the sciences is focused on difference. Researchers design their studies with the hope that they can reject the null hypothesis that experimental groups do not differ.

The examination of personality and individual differences is a major field of research in the modern discipline of psychology. Concerned with the ways humans develop an organised set of characteristics to shape themselves and the world around them, it is a study of how people come to be ‘different’ and ‘similar’ to others, on both an individual and a cultural level. The SAGE Handbook of Personality and Individual Difference is the broadest and most comprehensive overview of the field to date. With outstanding contributions from leading scholars across the world, this is an invaluable resource for researchers and graduate students. Its three volumes cover all of the central concepts, domains and debates of this globally-expanding discipline, including the core theoretical perspectives, research strategies, as well as the origins, applications, and measurement of personality and individual difference.