Evolution, early experience and human development: from research to practice and policy

Section I. Human nature : the effects of evolution and environment. The value of using an evolutionary framework for gauging children's well-being / Darcia Narvaez ... [et al.]

Bowlby's "environment of evolutionary adaptedness" : recent studies on the interpersonal neurobiology of attachment and emotional development / Allan N. Schore ; Commentary : Early experience, neurobiology, plasticity, vulnerability, and resilience / Michael E. Lamb

How primary-process emotional systems guide child development : ancestral regulators of human happiness, thriving, and suffering / Jaak Panksepp ; Commentary : The integrative meaning of emotion / Daniel J. Siegel

Epigenetics and the environmental regulation of the genome and its function / Michael J. Meaney ; Commentary : The messages of epigenetic research / Jerome Kagan

Neurobiology and the evolution of mammalian social behavior / C. Sue Carter and Stephen W. Porges

Dopamine : another "magic bullet" for caregiver responsiveness? / Viara Mileva-Seitz, Veronica M. Afonso, Alison S. Fleming

The neurobiological basis of empathy and its development in the context of our evolutionary heritage / Eric E. Nelson ; Commentary : The death of empathy? / Bruce D. Perry

Section I commentary : Born for art, and the joyful companionship of fiction / Colwin Trevarthen

Section II. Early experience : the effects of cultural practice. Birth and the first postnatal hour / Wenda R. Trevathan

Nighttime nurturing : an evolutionary perspective on breastfeeding and sleep / Helen L. Ball and Charlotte K. Russell

Touch and pain perception in infants / Tiffany Field and Maria Hernandez-Reif

Infant feeding practices : rates, risks of not breastfeeding, and factors influencing breastfeeding / Zaharah Sulaiman, Lisa H. Amir, and Pranee Liamputtong ; Commentary : Short-term and long-term effects of oxytocin released by suckling and of skin-to-skin contact in mothers and infants / Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg

Developmental optimization / Darcia Narvaex and Tracy R. Gleason ; Commentary : Darwin et al. on developmental optimization / David Loye

Section II commentary : Adaptations and adaptations / Ross A. Thompson

Section III. Themes in human evolution. Play, plasticity, and ontogeny in childhood / Anthony D. Pellegrini and Adam F.A. Pellegrini

The value of a play-filled childhood in development of the hunter-gatherer individual / Peter Gray

Rough-and-tumble play and the cooperation-competition dilemma : evolutionary and developmental perspectives on the development of social competence / Joseph L. Flanders, Khalisa N. Herman, and Daniel Paquette ; Commentary : Play in hunter-gatherers / Barry S. Hewlett and Adam H. Boyette

Section IV. Perspectives and counterperspectives. Perspective 1 : Why would natural selection craft an organism whose future functioning is influenced by its earlier experiences? / Jay Belsky

Perspective 2 : Play, plasticity, and the perils of conflict : "problematizing" sociobiology / Melvin Konner

Perspective 3 : The emergent organism : a new paradigm / William A. Mason

Perspective 4 : Can science progress to a revitalized past? / G.A. Bradshaw

Perspective 5 : Earliest experiences and attachment processes / Howard Steele

Perspective 6 : Nurturant versus nonnurturant environments and the failure of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness / James W. Prescott

Perspective 7 : "It's dangerous to be an infant" : ongoing relevance of John Bowlby's enviroment of evolutionary adaptedness in promoting healthier births, safer maternal-infant sleep, and breastfeeding in a contemporary Western industrial context / James J. McKenna and Lee T. Gettler

Section V. Conclusion. The future of human nature : implications for research, policy, and ethics / Darcia Narvaez ... [et al.].