Jodie A. Baird

Executive Attention and Metacognitive Regulation

Metacognition refers to any knowledge or cognitive process that monitors or controls cognition. We highlight similarities between metacognitive and executive control functions, and ask how these processes might be implemented in the human brain. A review of brain imaging studies reveals a circuitry of attentional networks involved in these control processes, with its source located in midfrontal areas. These areas are active during conflict resolution, error correction, and emotional regulation. A developmental approach to the organization of the anatomy involved in executive control provides an added perspective on how these mechanisms are influenced by maturation and learning, and how they relate to metacognitive activity.

Awareness and metacognition

Kentridge and Heywood (this issue) extend the concept of metacognition to include unconscious processes. We acknowledge the possible contribution of unconscious processes, but favor a central role of awareness in metacognition. We welcome Shimamuras (this issue) extension of the concept of metacognitive regulation to include aspects of working memory, and its relation to executive attention. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

Knowing Others in the First Year of Life

A newborn fixates on the parent’s face. In a matter of weeks, the young baby will smile in response to the parent. Within the first year, most babies will actively redirect their parents’ attention to an object of their own interest, and before parents have time to put the baby pictures away in an album, young toddlers will begin to read their parents’ minds, forging the link between adult mental states and the actions they generate. How do infants move from an initial attraction to other people to an eventual understanding of them? In particular, what predispositions, knowledge, and skills are available to infants in the first year of life to ready them for the development of a theory of mind – that is, an understanding that people are motivated by internal, psychological states? These questions are central among those addressed by Maria Legerstee in her book, Infants’ Sense of People: Precursors to a Theory of Mind. Drawing primarily on a large body of her own research, Legerstee challenges the notion that infants’ initial perception of people is based on behavioral features (such as selfpropelled movement), and argues instead that infants’ earliest understanding of people is based on a conceptual distinction between people and other objects. Infants, in Legerstee’s view, are innately predisposed to both identify and identify with others. Extensive research has demonstrated that, from birth, infants preferentially respond to human faces and voices, distinguishing these social stimuli from other visual and auditory input [faces: e.g., Goren, Sarty, & Wu, 1975; voices: e.g., DeCasper & Fifer, 1980]. Questions do arise, however, with respect to what these early preferences reveal about infants’ understanding of others. Do infants distinguish people from objects on the basis of perceptual features at the start, only later to develop a conceptual distinction between social and nonsocial stimuli? Or are infants born