ABSTRACT
Understanding is often accomplished through a sequential process of analysis followed by synthesis: we tear things apart, scrutinize the pieces in relative isolation, and only then begin to explore how the pieces interact to comprise a whole. Research on human development is now emerging from a protracted period of analysis during which various aspects of human function were studied one piece at a time. The worst excesses of this period, including our fascination with genetic determinism and extreme domain specificity, are now considered untenable, and interest has shifted to the complicated ways in which processes at cultural, social, cognitive, neural, and molecular levels of analysis operate together to yield human behavior and human development. The aim of this volume is to showcase outstanding examples of this new synthesis and, by doing so, to herald the birth of a new, more ecumenical discipline: “developmental social cognitive neuroscience.”
