Brain and cognitive development in infancy.

Recent behavioral studies of infants have provided further evidence for the existence of cognitive and perceptual abilities in the first few months of life. Additional evidence from developmental neuroscience and comparative psychology has supported the view that, in some domains, such as visual attention and face and speech recognition, multiple neurocognitive processes give rise to the pattern of behavioral development observed over the first years of life. Primitive abilities and constraints present from birth may play an important role in facilitating the development of later-emerging processes that are more responsive to the effects of experience. In other domains, such as object permanence and memory, previous claims that the pattern of development was best accounted for by the sequential development of multiple neurocognitive systems have been brought into question.