Article
The Development of Body Structure Knowledge in Infancy
Child Development Perspectives
(2016)
Abstract
Although we know much about the development of face processing, we know considerably less about the development of body knowledge—despite bodies also being significant sources of social information. One set of studies indicated that body structure knowledge is poor during the 1st year of life and spawned a model that posits that, unlike the development of face knowledge, which benefits from innate propensities and dedicated learning mechanisms, the development of body knowledge relies on general learning mechanisms and develops slowly. In this article, we review studies on infants' knowledge about the structure of bodies and their processing of gender and emotion that paint a different picture. Although questions remain, a general social cognition system likely engenders similar trajectories of development of knowledge about faces and bodies, and may equip developing infants with the capacity to obtain socially critical information from many sources.
Keywords
- development of body knowledge,
- body structure of perception,
- social cognition
Disciplines
Publication Date
March, 2016
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12162
Citation Information
Ramesh S. Bhatt, Alyson J. Hock, Hannah White, Rachel Jubran, et al.. "The Development of Body Structure Knowledge in Infancy" Child Development Perspectives Vol. 10 Iss. 1 (2016) p. 45 - 52 ISSN: 1750-8606 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/alyson-chroust/5/