This volume is based on one of the first interdisciplinary meetings to focus on early developmental neurocognition. It has now been clearly established that human infants process complex events such as faces and speech sounds quite early in their life. The crucial problem nowadays is to elucidate how these competences emerge and develop: what kinds of mechanisms are involved that make information processing systems both so specific and so adaptive to the relevant biological signals, how the interactions with the environmental inputs contribute to the neuronal functional organization, to the onset and changes in competences, and how the various successive changes in infants' abilities and competences relate to each other. These are some of the questions addressed in the present volume: they constitute major challenges to neurobiologists, neuropsychologists, psychologists and linguists. Not only is human cognitive development a fascinating and important issue per se, it is also crucial to understanding the neurobiological mechanisms involved in adult competences. The meeting on which this volume was based was held in July 1992. It brought together some outstanding international specialists in the relevant scientific fields in a spirit of interdisciplinary exchange. Their contributions cover the latest research on these topics and include some exciting new conceptual advances.

This volume contains the proceedings of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on the topic of "Changes in Speech and Face Processing in Infancy: A glimpse at Developmental Mechanisms of Cognition," which was held in Carry-Ie-Rouet (France) at the Vacanciel "La Calanque," from June 29 to July 3, 1992. For many years, developmental researchers have been systematically exploring what is concealed by the blooming and buzzing confusion (as William James described the infant's world). Much research has been carried out on the mechanisms by which organisms recognize and relate to their conspecifics, in particular with respect to language acquisition and face recognition. Given this background, it seems worthwhile to compare not only the conceptual advances made in these two domains, but also the methodological difficulties faced in each of them. In both domains, there is evidence of sophisticated abilities right from birth. Similarly, researchers in these domains have focused on whether the mechanisms underlying these early competences are modality-specific, object specific or otherwise."

This book explores the origin and evolution of speech. The human speech system is in a league of its own in the animal kingdom and its possession dwarfs most other evolutionary achievements. During every second of speech we unconsciously use about 225 distinct muscle actions. To investigate the evolutionary origins of this prodigious ability, Peter MacNeilage draws on work in linguistics, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and animal behavior. He puts forward a neo-Darwinian account of speech as a process of descent in which ancestral vocal capabilities became modified in response to natural selection pressures for more efficient communication. His proposals include the crucial observation that present-day infants learning to produce speech reveal constraints that were acting on our ancestors as they invented new words long ago. This important and original investigation integrates the latest research on modern speech capabilities, their acquisition, and their neurobiology, including the issues surrounding the cerebral hemispheric specialization for speech. Written in a clear style with minimal recourse to jargon the book will interest a wide range of readers in cognitive, neuro-, and evolutionary science, as well as all those seeking to understand the nature and evolution of speech and human communication.