From prenatal life onwards, our emotions play a central role in our development. Exactly how emotions shape our lives is less clear. We know that emotional impairments can have a disastrous effect on development. We know that emotions play a key role in adaptation. We know that traumatic emotional events can scar individuals. The processes through which these emotional changes occur are complex however, and have recently become the subject of considerable interest in the cognitive sciences.

In this volume an outstanding group of scientists considers emotional development from fetal life onwards. The book includes views from neuroscience, primatology, robotics, psychopathology, and prenatal development. It also includes studies of emotional development in both normal and clinical populations. The first of its kind, this book will be of major interest to all those studying emotion, from the fields of social, developmental, and clinical psychology, to psychiatry, and neuroscience.