Traditionally, brain development was assumed to begin post-birth, detached from sensory experiences. However, recent revelations challenge this notion, demonstrating that infants respond to sensory stimuli before birth. This chapter explores early sensory development in infants, starting in the womb. We investigate the evolution of attention in infants, encompassing its various forms and developmental trajectories. Attention plays a pivotal role in their engagement with the environment. Subsequently, we delve into perceptual learning, highlighting infants innate ability to discern patterns and create expectations. Our focus turns to auditory and visual processing, elucidating how infants perceive and interpret their surroundings. We dissect the neural mechanisms underpinning visual processing, with a special emphasis on face recognition as a model for perceptual learning and adaptability. Finally, we explore multisensory integration in infants, revealing how diverse sensory modalities develop in harmony, shaping their perception of the worlds patterns. This chapter unravels the intricate journey of sensory development in infants, illuminating the bedrock of their perceptual world.

Language, a hallmark of human cognition, is a complex and universal tool for conveying thoughts and ideas. This chapter navigates the intricate landscape of language development, spanning its various dimensions. We begin by dissecting language into its components, be it spoken or signed, and explore its dual nature – both specific and universal. The chapter illuminates the brains remarkable capacity to derive meaning from linguistic input, pinpointing the neural structures underpinning language comprehension and production. Distinguishing between language quantity and quality, we delve into the role of contingent learning and experiential adaptation in molding linguistic abilities. Additionally, we ponder the evolutionary origins of language, contemplating its exclusive human attribute. Drawing from a diverse pool of research, including neuroimaging, behavioral assessments, and developmental studies, this chapter offers a comprehensive view of language development. It underscores the profound influence of gene–environment interactions in enabling infants to acquire language organically, without explicit instruction.

Discussions of age differences in attention often start with the heuristic that older adults show reductions in top-down, goal-driven controlled attention compared to young adults, but relatively preserved bottom-up, stimulus-driven, and more automatic attentional functions. However, age differences in sensorimotor function can reduce the bottom-up salience of environmental stimuli. This can in turn lead to seemingly paradoxical findings of larger age-related deficits in very simple tasks that rely almost entirely on bottom-up attention than those that make moderate, but still-achievable, demands on top-down attention, and thus present opportunities for compensation. We suggest that just as attention represents the interplay of sensory and cognitive function, some of the most interesting and important age differences in attention occur at the interplay of top-down and bottom-up processes. New directions for the field include an increasing emphasis on the additional interplay between cognitive and motivational processes, and their physiological basis.