Infants' Sense of People

Maria Legerstee is Professor of Psychology at York University, Toronto, where she established the Centre for Infancy Studies in 1991. She has published in journals of development psychology and child development.

• Preface; Introduction; 1. Definitions, theories and plan of the book; 2. Endogenous and exogenous influences in development; 3. Animate/inanimate distinction; 4. Self and consciousness; 5. Dyadic interactions; 6. Triadic interactions - joint engagement in 5 and 7 month-olds; 7. Social influences on the infant's developing sense of people; 8. The effects of affect mirroring on social and cognitive competence; 9. The quality of social interaction affects infants' primitive desire reasoning; 10. Social cognition - affect attunement, imitation and contingency.

'The book provides a valuable synthesis of current theoretical approaches and research on the roots of social and cognitive development in general, with a focus on children's Theory of Mind.' Pnina S. Klein, Bar-Ilan University, Israel