Professor
Ph.D., Cornell University, 1965
Infant Perception and Cognition

Email: bower@utdallas.edu
Phone: 972-883-2830
Office: GR 4.802B

About Thomas Bower

The first international conference devoted to research in infancy took place in 1966. There were ten participants, of whom I was one. Since that time the field of infancy research has boomed; it has its own journals; its conferences attract thousands of participants. I was fortunate enough to be one of the pioneers of this recently established field.

My own research foci have included perception, cognition, motor skills and learning. In the early 1960's it would be fair to say that human infants were regarded as vegetables, requiring regular feeding and watering. The intervening years have shown that from birth human infants organize their world in very adult-like ways and, perhaps most importantly, begin to learn with incredible efficiency from the moment they are born. Outsiders have attributed a great number of these advances to my initiatives. My first book, Development in Infancy (1974; 1982) was the first attempt to systematize theory and data on infancy. The book was translated into every modern European language, including Russian; it was also translated into Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese. It was warmly received in all of these countries, save perhaps China where it was criticized for having a mercantilist, or capitalist, orientation.

There is still a great deal to find out about development in infancy. The desire to find out more was part of my reason for coming to UT Dallas. At UTD, we have established a newborn research lab. There are very few such labs in the world; only two in the United States. To make full use of the availability of newborns, I and my colleagues have developed a number of new behavioral technologies which are beginning to pay off in terms of new data. At a practical level, we have a new technology for measurement of newborn hearing and will soon have a standardized assessment for newborn vision.

The second attraction of UTD was the very strong program at the Callier Center. Infants, by definition, do not speak. What are they doing during the period of pre-speech that prepares them to use language? In collaboration with speech pathologists and other colleagues, we have already begun to answer these questions.

Almost all of my publications since arriving at UTD have been in collaboration with graduate students and post-docs. More recently, several papers have been published on which the senior author was a graduating undergraduate student.

Research Interests

My research interests include many aspects of typical and atypical infant development, such as speech perception, face recognition, memory processes and learning capabilities of hours-old newborn infants. My more recent research interests include logical analyses of newborn learning, and language and cognitive development in young children with autism.

Recent Publications

Aldridge, M.A., Stillman, R.D. and Bower, T.G.R. (2001). Newborn categorization of vowel-like sounds. Developmental Science, 4, 220-232.

Aldridge, M.A., Stone, K., Sweeney, M. and Bower, T.G.R. (2000). Preverbal children with autism understand the intentions of others. Developmental Science, 3, 294-301.

Hernandez, T., Aldridge, M.A., and Bower, T.G.R. (2000). Structural factors in newborn preference for speech sound. Developmental Science, 3, 46-49.