ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a symposium at the 1977 meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It deals with the parameters and functions of the interactive or transactive processes in which the infant is involved from birth onward. The book examines some of the things that happen in the neonatal period with regard to the social bonding of the newborn infant and its mother. When the scientific study of human development began in earnest in the late 1800s one of the natural sources of information was to be found in observations of the development of the human infant. In the early diaries of the "baby-watchers" was recorded some of the basic information about regularities of development and dynamic forces of change.
