Written by the Director of the world-renowned Touch Research Institutes, this book examines the practical applications of important massage therapy research findings. Each chapter of this comprehensive resource provides a clear and authoritative review of what is reliably known about the effects of touch for a variety of clinical conditions such as depression, pain management, movement problems, and functioning of the immune system. Coverage also includes the benefits of massage to specific populations such as pregnant women, neonates, infants, and adolescents. This book is suitable for massage therapists (including Shiatsu practitioners), aromatherapists, chiropractors, osteopaths, physical therapists, and nurses.

In the late 1960s, after a period of intense acceleration of the pace of research on human infancy, a number of investigators some anthropologists, some psychologists, some psychiatrists and paediatricians, and even a few ethologists developed the conviction that certain contributions to the understanding of infancy would come from, and perhaps only come from, cross-cultural and cross-population studies.

This book, originally published in 1981, represents part of the first fruit of that conviction, and its impressive range of chapters justifies not only the belief itself but also the several rationales behind it."

In the late 1960s, after a period of intense acceleration of the pace of research on human infancy, a number of investigators - some anthropologists, some psychologists, some psychiatrists and paediatricians, and even a few ethologists - developed the conviction that certain contributions to the understanding of infancy would come from, and perhaps only come from, cross-cultural and cross-population studies. This book, originally published in 1981, represents part of the first fruit of that conviction, and its impressive range of chapters justifies not only the belief itself but also the several rationales behind it.

Until very recently, almost all books on infancy assumed basic infant immaturity. Remarkably, as Tiffany Field shows in her survey of recent research, investigators are discovering that infants possess sophisticated perceptual skills, such as hearing, even before birth. Newborns can sense touch and motion, discriminate tastes and smells, recognize their mother's voice, and imitate facial expressions. In fact, the newborn is an active learner, looking, reaching, sucking, and grimacing from its first moments in its new environment. Field provides a readable account of our current knowledge about infant development. She looks at the emergence of sensorimotor and cognitive skills, which play an important role in social and emotional development in the months following birth as the infant experiences the world. In a chapter with important implications for working mothers, Field reviews the literature on infants in nursery and daycare programs, countering negative assessments with studies that show an enhancement of infants' social interaction in good care settings. In the concluding chapter, she pays particular attention to infants at risk because of disease (including AIDS), maternal drug use, prematurity, or maternal depression, and describes possible intervention strategies. The bibliography provides an invaluable summary of significant primary reference papers for professional researchers, students, and parents.