Psychologists and neuroscientists have long accepted that the brain changes in size and shape throughout the course of child development . These changes are by no means uniform – the underlying processes of myelination and pruning vary in pace across brain regions (Lenroot & Giedd, 2006). Conversely, trends in regional development are likely uniform across our species (Stiles & Jernigan, 2010). In fact, deviations from normative trends in neurodevelopment are thought to be a core factor underlying psychopathology across the lifespan (Giedd et al., 2008; Giedd & Rapoport, 2010). This assertion, however, presumes a well-defined reference for “normal” brain development – common trends in the growth of individual brain regions across the time course of child development. Yet, despite a decades-old call to inform the study of what is abnormal in psychology with knowledge of what is normal (Cicchetti, 1984), our collective knowledge of the typical course of neural development is strikingly limited. The proposed study aims to enhance knowledge about normative brain maturation by examining longitudinal trends in the development of the amygdala, a region with important implications for a wide range of developmental processes.