Book excerpt: First published in 1987. This book is not intended to be either a comprehensive reference work or a systematic handbook on perception in infancy. Nor is it another published report of a recently held conference. It is a collection of state-of-the-art essays on perception during the first year or so of infant development. Rather than first choosing the topics and then finding experts to write about them the editors first chose the experts and invited them to write about those topics in which we know them to be interested and closely involved. The outcome of this approach is a collection of chapters in which the authors at the same time critically review earlier contributions to the topic, report their own work, identify numerous unresolved problems and key issues, and point out directions for future inquiry. Naturally the emphasis placed on these facets varies markedly with both topic and author. The result is a collection of commentaries that we believe to be comprehensive, informative, interesting, and provocative.