models. The role of brain changes in attention development is a natural extension of work in this field. Techniques from neuropsychology, neuro- imaging, and neuroscience-based experimental psychology are now being applied to the study of developmental changes in attention. Which brings us to the current book. Developmental research in young infants, in children, and in the life span provides an important complement to work with adults in the understanding of attention. Many neural systems are immature, or nonfunctional, in the young infant. The lack of these systems, corresponding behavioral characteristics, and the developmental onset of the neural and behavioral systems, provides some information about how these neural systems are expressed in intact adults. Similarly, the changes in brain systems in the elderly (e.g., correlates of Alzheimer's) and changes in attention in the elderly may be considered in a similar light. This volume provides several models of the neural bases of attention, and details how developmental research on these topics leads to a fuller understanding of the cognitive neuroscience of attention. This book pro- vides a contemporary summary of work in this area and a systematic back- ground for further study of attention development from a cognitive neu- roscience perspective. Part I of the book deals with the neural basis of eye movements, and how attention development may be characterized based on an under- standing of development in those neural systems. Part II explores the overt and covert orienting of attention, attention directed to objects and to spatial locations, and the relation of attention development and brain development to more general issues in cognitive development. Part III contains chapters on the neural basis of attention development as related to memory, possible neural relation to individual differences in infant attention and cognition, and a life-span approach to studying attention development. Each section includes an invited "summary and commentary" chapter that highlights some of the issues raised. The part sections are suggestions for coordinating chapters, but are not meant to be absolute boundaries. For example, many of the concepts involved in the covert shift of attention found in the second section have their basis in the neural systems controlling eye movements discussed in Part I. Thus, the chapters by Rafal, and Hood, Atkinson, and Braddick, borrow heavily on concepts introduced in the chapters by Schiller, and Maurer and Lewis; in the third section the chapter by Enns, Brodeur, and Trick on life-span changes in covert attention relies on concepts presented in Parts I and II. Similarly, the development of the object concept depends on delayed recognition memory presumed by Bell in the second section to be based on development in the frontal lobes, and thus is related to recognition memory development presented by Nelson and Dukette, and related to individual differences in infant cognition discussed by Colombo -viii- |