Emotional Development is an area that has seen an explosion of research over the past 15 years. Peter LaFreniere's timely book is the first text to synthesize this sub-field in an accessible text aimed explicitly at both advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. One of the central themes of this book is that emotions must be understood in an integrative way because of their complex connections with biological, cognitive, and social processes, all of which undergo development. Because of this essential unity, emotional development is discussed, not as a separate aspect of the self, but as intimately linked to cognitive, linguistic, social, and personality development. EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: A BIOSOCIAL PERSPECTIVE defines and describes a biosocial perspective on emotional development. This biosocial perspective emphasizes the vital functions that emotions serve, illustrating the necessity of uniting nature and nurture in order to more fully understand the development and function of human emotions..