This volume explores the development as early as infancy of social cognitive abilities, including prelinguistic communicative and monitoring abilities hitherto only suspected. For developmental psychologists and early childhood educators.

Contents: Preface. Part I: Origins of Social Cognition.P. Rochat, T. Striano, Social-Cognitive Development in the First Year. E.M. Blass, The Ontogeny of Human Infant Face Recognition: Orogustatory, Visual, and Social Influences. D.N. Stern, Vitality Contours: The Temporal Contour of Feelings as a Basic Unit for Constructing the Infant's Social Experience. M. Lewis, Social Cognition and the Self. Part II: Early Sensitivity to Social Contingencies.G. Gergely, J.S. Watson, Early Socio-Emotional Development: Contingency Perception and the Social-Biofeedback Model. A.E. Bigelow, Infants' Sensitivity to Imperfect Contingency in Social Interaction. D. Muir, S. Hains, Young Infants' Perception of Adult Intentionality: Adult Contingency and Eye Direction. J. Nadel, H. Tremblay-Leveau, Early Perception of Social Contingencies and Interpersonal Intentionality: Dyadic and Triadic Paradigms. Part III: Early Monitoring of Others.D.A. Baldwin, J.A. Baird, Action Analysis: A Gateway to Intentional Inference. C. Moore, Gaze Following and the Control of Attention. D. Poulin-Dubois, Infants' Distinction Between Animate and Inanimate Objects: The Origins of Naive Psychology. L.B. Adamson, C.L. Russell, Emotion Regulation and the Emergence of Joint Attention. Part IV: Commentary.M. Tomasello, Social Cognition Before the Revolution.