This issue begins with three papers discussing, among other things, cognitive processing in Williams syndrome. Although a rare condition (1 per 20,000 births), Williams syndrome has attracted a great deal of research in recent years. This probably reflects two interesting features of the condition; that much is known about the genetic cause, and that people with Williams syndrome show an interestingly uneven profile of abilities and difficulties. It is this latter aspect that is explored in the present papers, which pursue an understanding of the nature of face, object, and word processing in Williams syndrome.

It is a great pleasure to write my first editorial, attempting to draw out the clinical relevance of some of the papers in this issue. I think a number of themes emerge in this issue, connected to the enduring problem of inferring underlying processes and problems from behaviour. We all know that behaviour is complex and messy, that the same behaviour may have many different underlying causes, and that the same core difficulty may have different behavioural manifestations in different individuals, at different ages or ability levels. These challenges, and some possible advances, are central to a number of papers in this issue.

The issue of the relationship between the quality, quantity, and timing of childcare outside the home and later psychological development has been one of the most hotly contested social policy issues for developmental psychology. The Emanuel Miller lecture in this issue of the JCPP is by Jay Belsky, whose writing on this topic has been at the centre of the debate. The paper provides a current perspective on the issue and summarises evidence indicating that early, extensive, and continuous non-maternal care is related to less harmonious patterns of mother–child interaction and high levels of noncompliance and aggression in later childhood. Belsky suggests that this evidence should be seen as a cause for concern but not necessarily alarm. Although the effects detected are not attributed to low-quality care, nor do they merely reflect assertiveness rather than true aggression, it would be a mistake to exaggerate the magnitude of what are clearly modest negative effects of early childcare. Moreover, the evidence does not suggest that prolonged periods in care predict later clinical levels of behaviour problems. Even though the findings summarised in this paper may therefore be of limited clinical relevance, especially when considered from the perspective of an individual child or family, they would seem to be important when seen from the perspective of society as a whole. This becomes even more important given that full-time or near-full-time care initiated in the first year of life and which continues until school entry, i.e. early, extensive, and continuous care, is rapidly becoming the usual experience of children in America and perhaps in other countries too. Thus there is a need to distinguish implications for individual children and for society at large. This is why the paper recommends policy that extends parental leave and gives parents more options to work on a part-time basis, something that some research indicates is exactly what parents want.

This paper argues for the scientific utility of the concept “intelligence”. In the first section three common arguments against the validity of general intelligence are discussed and dismissed. The second section presents the evidence in favour of the proposition that individual differences in IQ may be based on differences in speed of information processing. However, the third section shows that executive functions, particularly inhibitory processes, represent a more likely basis for the development of intelligence. The theory of the minimal cognitive architecture underlying intelligence and development (Anderson, 1992a) shows how speed and executive functioning might represent two dimensions to g—one an individual differences (within age) dimension based on speed and the other a developmental dimension based on changing executive functioning. In the fourth section this theory is used to generate new insights on the nature of intellectual disability and specific cognitive deficits and to make practical suggestions for educational intervention for low-IQ children.

In the mid to late 1980s a major controversy erupted when Belsky's (1986, 1988, 1990) analysis of research produced the conclusion that early and extensive nonmaternal care carried risks in terms of increasing the probability of insecure infant–parent attachment relationships and promoting aggression and noncompliance during the toddler, preschool, and early primary school years. Widespread critiques of Belsky's analysis called attention to problems associated with the Strange Situation procedure for measuring attachment security in the case of day-care reared children and to the failure of much of the cited research to take into consideration child-care quality and control for background factors likely to make children with varying child-care experiences developmentally different in the first place. In this lecture, research concerning the developmental effects of child care and maternal employment initiated in the first year of life that has emerged since the controversy broke is reviewed. Evidence indicating that early, extensive, and continuous nonmaternal care is associated with less harmonious parent–child relations and elevated levels of aggression and noncompliance suggests that concerns raised about early and extensive child care 15 years ago remain valid and that alternative explanations of Belsky's originally controversial conclusion do not account for seemingly adverse effects of routine nonmaternal care that continue to be reported in the literature.

Face recognition is often considered to be a modular (encapsulated) function. This annotation supports the proposal that faces are special, but suggests that their identification makes use of general-purpose cortical systems that are implicated in high-level vision and also in memory and learning more generally. These systems can be considered to function within two distinct cortical streams: a medial stream (for learning and salience of faces encountered) and a lateral stream (for distributed representations of visual properties and identities of faces). Function in the lateral stream, especially, may be critically dependent on the normal development of magnocellular vision. The relevance of face recognition anomalies in three developmental syndromes (Autism, Williams syndrome, and Turner syndrome) and the two-route model sketched above is considered.

Many children suffer an injury to the head at some time, but relatively few of these cause major problems. However, in a few cases the sequelae can be far reaching. This review considers how to evaluate the significance of a head injury. Factors to consider are (1) injury variables: cause, severity and type of injury; (2) child variables: premorbid functioning, age, and developmental level of the child both at injury and at assessment; and (3) the cognitive, behavioural, and emotional problems that may arise. Parental beliefs and knowledge about the injury as well as the overall effect of an injury on the family as a whole are also considered.

This Annotation highlights recent research on the role of peer group and friendship factors in the development of psychopathology in childhood and adolescence. Several processes are considered, including peer rejection (e.g., exclusion and victimization), social withdrawal and avoidance of peer interaction, and the socialization of deviant behavior and internalizing problems. The mediating influences of several proximal components are examined, including cognitive-perceptual factors and emotion regulation. In addition, the moderating influences of close friendship, age, gender, ethnicity, and group norms are considered. Several promising avenues for future directions in research are highlighted, including the examination of heterogeneity in developmental processes, further investigation of gender-based norms, and the application of multi-level modeling techniques and gene-environment process models.

We review research evidence on the emergence and development of active “self-and-other” awareness in infancy, and examine the importance of its motives and emotions to mental health practice with children. This relates to how communication begins and develops in infancy, how it influences the individual subject's movement, perception, and learning, and how the infant's biologically grounded self-regulation of internal state and self-conscious purposefulness is sustained through active engagement with sympathetic others. Mutual self-other-consciousness is found to play the lead role in developing a child's cooperative intelligence for cultural learning and language. A variety of preconceptions have animated rival research traditions investigating infant communication and cognition. We distinguish the concept of “intersubjectivity”, and outline the history of its use in developmental research.The transforming body and brain of a human individual grows in active engagement with an environment of human factors—organic at first, then psychological or inter-mental. Adaptive, human-responsive processes are generated first by interneuronal activity within the developing brain as formation of the human embryo is regulated in a support-system of maternal tissues. Neural structures are further elaborated with the benefit of intra-uterine stimuli in the foetus, then supported in the rapidly growing forebrain and cerebellum of the young child by experience of the intuitive responses of parents and other human companions. We focus particularly on intrinsic patterns and processes in pre-natal and post-natal brain maturation that anticipate psychosocial support in infancy. The operation of an intrinsic motive formation (IMF) that developed in the core of the brain before birth is evident in the tightly integrated intermodal sensory-motor coordination of a newborn infant's orienting to stimuli and preferential learning of human signals, by the temporal coherence and intrinsic rhythms of infant behaviour, especially in communication, and neonates' extraordinary capacities for reactive and evocative imitation. The correct functioning of this integrated neural motivating system is found to be essential to the development of both the infant's purposeful consciousness and his or her ability to cooperate with other persons' actions and interests, and to learn from them.The relevance of infants' inherent intersubjectivity to major child mental health issues is highlighted by examining selected areas of clinical concern. We review recent findings on postnatal depression, prematurity, autism, ADHD, specific language impairments, and central auditory processing deficits, and comment on the efficacy of interventions that aim to support intrinsic motives for intersubjective communication when these are not developing normally.

HIV and AIDS have made a huge global impact, permeating the social, cultural, and economic fabric of almost all nations. The first cases of HIV infection in children were reported in the late 1980s and numbers have since risen steadily throughout the world, with some of the poorest and least developed countries experiencing the highest prevalence. Combined drug regimes have changed the course of HIV-related illness and brought increased survival to those for whom treatment is available. With this, however, have come fresh concerns relating to drug resistance, treatment adherence, and the risk of second-generation vertical transmission as HIV-infected children now survive into adulthood and beyond. The psychological literature has addressed issues such as the direct effect of HIV on child development, social and cultural attitudes, family functioning and support, affected children and orphans of HIV-infected parents, sexual health education, disclosure of diagnosis, and long-term clinical management. The outcome for those living in wealthier countries is optimistic, but the spread of this virus in the rest of the world and its impact on family life and social and political systems remains of great concern.

This paper reviews the presentation, clinical features, and management of early-onset bipolar disorder. A framework for the treatment is based upon a systematic, critical appraisal of the available literature. A multimodal approach is emphasised using individual and family psychoeducational interventions in conjunction with pharmacotherapy. The role of mood stabilisers—lithium—and the anticonvulsants—sodium valproate and carbamazepine—is reviewed, alongside the treatments for depression in bipolar disorder and refractory mania.

Recent advances in understanding the genetics of reading and spelling disorder are reviewed and, based on theoretical models of reading development, different related phenotypes such as phonological and orthographic processing are examined. Family and twin studies show a moderate to high familiality and heritability. Segregation analyses suggest a major gene effect, with reduced penetrance in females, as well as a polygenic model. Linkage analyses and an association study have identified possible loci on chromosomes 6 and 15. These results suggest that reading and spelling disorder should be regarded as a complex disorder, strongly influenced by genetic factors. However, the role of environmental factors should also be considered as the clinical implications of the genetic findings in terms of aetiology and intervention still require far more exploration.

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder which, among other characteristics, has a distinctive cognitive profile. Nonverbal abilities are generally poor in relation to verbal abilities, but also show varying levels of ability in relation to each other. Performance on block construction tasks represents arguably the weakest nonverbal ability in WS. In this study we examined two requirements of block construction tasks in 21 individuals with WS and 21 typically developing (TD) control individuals. The Squares tasks, a novel two-dimensional block construction task, manipulated patterns by segmentation and perceptual cohesiveness to investigate the first factor, processing preference (local or global), and by obliqueness to examine the second factor, the ability to use mental imagery. These two factors were investigated directly by the Children's Embeded Figures Test (CEFT; Witkin, Oltman, Raskin, & Karp, 1971) and a mental rotation task respectively. Results showed that individuals with WS did not differ from the TD group in their processing style. However, the ability to use mental imagery was significantly poorer in the WS group than the TD group. This suggests that weak performance on the block construction tasks in WS may relate to an inability to use mental imagery.

Previous twin and family studies have indicated that there are strong genetic influences in the etiology of autism, and provide support for the notion of a broader phenotype in first-degree relatives. The present study explored this phenotype in terms of one current cognitive theory of autism. Parents and brothers of boys with autism, boys with dyslexia, and normal boys were given tests of “central coherence”, on which children with autism perform unusually well due to an information-processing bias favouring part/detail processing over processing of wholes/meaning. Results indicated that fathers of boys with autism, as a group, showed piecemeal processing across four tests of central coherence. This was not true for any other group. These findings raise the possibility that the broader autism phenotype may include a “cognitive style” (weak central coherence) that can confer information-processing advantages.