Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction: the traditional view and its alternative, a summary -- Is there a problem? -- Interactionism without interactions -- The dichotomies remain -- Resistance to change -- The traditional view of psychological development -- The ecological, dynamic systems view -- Organization of the book -- Discussion points -- 2 Darwinian dichotomies and their dissolution -- Natural selection -- Learning -- The dichotomies -- The nature/nurture dichotomy -- The organism/environment dichotomy -- The ontogenetic/phylogenetic dichotomy -- The biological/learning or social or cultural dichotomy -- The mind/body dichotomy -- Other means of change -- Whose side are you on? -- An interactionist alternative? -- Beginning the dissolution -- Preformationist forms of explanation -- The pernicious function of preformation -- 'Genes' or 'environments' as separate and sufficient causes? -- Regularity does not imply a regulator -- Phylogenetic or ontogenetic factors as separate and sufficient causes? -- Dissolving the organism/environment dichotomy -- Systems and relations -- Stable but changeable genes, stable but changeable environments -- The generation of generic forms: not a job for genetics -- Species-typical? -- Discussion points -- 3 Towards the alternative: ecological, dynamic systems -- Internal and external structure: equal partners -- Types of interaction and the integration of nature and nurture revisited -- Selection of cognition and action ignores the origin or location of factors -- What is selected in natural selection? -- Mixed paradigms: case studies in confusion -- One: orientation to faces -- The retention of preformationist thinking -- Lack of appreciation of the equal status of interacting factors.

The coupling of perception and action and the issue of representation -- The failure to explore the dyad as the unit of analysis -- Change as continuous, not dichotomous -- The 'generic/specific' continuum of knowledge -- The multiple affordances of primal interactions -- Different extensions of invariance within the same 'stimulus' -- Variations in faces and the interacting factors involved -- The effects of non-obvious early experience -- Two: disembedded mind or embedded robot -- The serial computer metaphor: why it is so powerful, but why it is so wrong -- Case study of complexity from simplicity, without the use of concepts -- Connectionism -- Discussion points -- 4 Dynamic systems theories -- Main properties of dynamic systems -- A different view of causality -- Focusing on human development -- Self-organization -- Collective variables (order parameters) -- Control parameters -- Control parameters and the production of levels of knowledge -- Types of attractors -- Changes at transitions -- How is skilled action possible? -- Dynamic systems and development -- So what does 'biological' mean? -- Discussion points -- 5 The ecological perspective: Gibson's legacy -- Gibson's critique of traditional thinking -- Dynamic invariance -- Why invariance is critical -- The effective environment -- Concepts are criteria: an infinite regress -- Empirical evidence against the 'cognitive' position -- The concept of affordance -- The continuity between perception, cognition and action -- Interactions between systems of different extensions of invariance -- How more generic systems interact with less -- Uniqueness in the face of invariance -- Different levels of complexity in invariances -- Information is not invariance -- Defining information -- Discussion points -- 6 The Creation of Knowledge -- Introduction -- Prenatal experience -- Response to stimulation.

Spontaneous activity -- Newborn 'reflexes'? -- Summary of relevance of prenatal experience -- The powerful properties of 'primal' interactions -- Providing the conditions for learning -- Reducing the problem by reducing the solution space -- Coupling task demands to abilities: keeping problems simple -- Providing sensitivity to context -- Summary of hypotheses -- A note on direct perception -- Discussion points -- 7 A sample of the evidence: wise owls, accurate ants -- A glance at the animal world -- Barn owl prey location -- Navigation by dead reckoning and learning -- Invariances involved in migration -- Responses to looming -- How bats learn to avoid obstacles -- Pigeons, people and humming birds -- Vervet monkey communication -- Changing form of locomotion after metamorphosis -- Weaning in rats -- The role of experience in 'primal' interactions -- Duckling calls -- Seeing and hearing mother bird: the need for intermodal experience -- Coupled primal and plastic interactions in humans -- Reaching -- Looming -- Intermodality -- Neonatal imitation -- Imitation of sounds -- How imitation occurs -- Knowledge of other minds? -- Intermodality and self-recognition -- Smiling -- Turn-taking through burst-pause sucking -- Using line of gaze as information for joint attention to objects -- 'Motherese' -- 'Motherese' in sign language -- Differential effects of different prosodic invariances -- How language emerges -- Adults as sensitively contingent -- Infant episodes -- Differentiated scaffolding -- Infant play -- Only humans can utilize the interactive affordances on offer -- The development of true language -- Primal perception of speech contrasts -- From sounds to words: relations between what can be directly perceived and what cannot -- Discussion points -- 8 The origins of knowledge -- The origins of knowledge: percepts or concepts?.

The primacy of concepts -- The dynamic systems response: stability versus sensitivity -- Varying assumptions -- An example from locomotion -- Forgetting context -- What is common and what is different in the views -- Uncoupling of representations and action: thinking as mental play -- Knowledge of the physical and social worlds: same or different? -- Two forms of invariance -- Scaffolding as social -- Looking back -- Discussion points -- General questions -- Glossary -- References -- Index.