About the book - Table Of Contents

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• Chapter 1: Studying Human Development
• Why study human development?
• A short history of developmental psychology
• Darwin and the theory of evolution
• Comparative psychology and ethology
• Imprinting and attachment
• Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology
• Learning theory and behaviourism
• Social learning theory
• Vygotsky and social interactions in development
• Piaget and cognitive development
• Information processing and cognitive development
• Sigmund Freud
• Current research and the legacy of the 20th century
• Studying development scientifically
• The problem with ‘facts’ (and the nature of data)
• The trouble with truth (and the nature of theory)
• Data, theories and progress in science
• Is developmental psychology a science like physics?
• Methods for studying human development
• Common methodological issues in science
• Reliability and validity
• Generality
• Correlations and cause and effect
• Special issues for research on human development
• Studying change
• Making mental processes visible
• Studying development ethically
• About this book
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary




PART I: THE BEGINNING OF LIFE




• Chapter 2: Bodies and Brains
• Human evolution
• Early ancestors
• One species
• The evolution of the brain
• Dynamic systems theory
• Genes
• The structure of our genetic material
• Nature, nurture and genes
• Prenatal development
• Conception
• From conception to birth
• The zygotic stage
• The embryo stage
• The fetal stage
• Birth
• Methods for studying prenatal development in more detail
• Fibre-optics, ultrasound and heart rate
• Habituation designs
• Behaviour and learning in the womb
• Movement
• The senses
• Touch
• Taste
• Smell
• Sight
• Hearing
• Genes, uterine environments and problems in development
• Genetic problems
• Environmental problems
• Physical development after birth
• Postnatal development of the brain
• The growing body
• Motor development
• In conclusion
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary



• Chapter 3:Infant Minds: Perception, Inference and Understanding in the First 18 Months
• Is the newborn mind a ‘blank slate’?
• Piaget’s theory of infant cognition
• Assimilation, accommodation and adaptation
• Sensori-motor intelligence
• Infant egocentricity and understanding objects
• Gibson’s theory
• Two views of infant minds
• Studying infant minds
• Methodological issues in infancy research
• Baby diaries
• Recording behaviour for research
• Drawing inferences from patterns of attention
• The senses
• Touch
• The senses
• Visual preference
• Habituation
• Conditioning
• Measuring physiological responses
• Heart rate
• Brain activity: PET, MRI and ERP
• Current research on infant minds
• Perceiving shapes
• Shape and size constancy
• Perceiving sounds
• Perceiving number
• Understanding objects
• Knowing that invisible things are there
• Inferences about the properties of invisible objects
• Alternative explanations for search errors
• Factors affecting search
• Memory
• Motor coordination
• Planning
• Understanding invisibility and searching for hidden objects
• A new theoretical understanding
• Connectionism and infant cognition
• A dynamic systems approach to infant cognition
• In conclusion
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary



• Chapter 4: Growing Emotions: Social and Personal Development in the First 18 Months
• Social responsiveness in the newborn
• Conflicting interpretations of early social responsiveness
• Recognizing people
• Learning about faces
• Distinguishing between living and inanimate things
• Understanding emotions
• Emotional expressiveness
• Feelings and emotions
• Understanding and sharing emotions
• Signalling and communicating with emotions
• Developing a concept of self
• What is the ‘self’?
• Studying the origins of self in infancy
• Explaining the origins of self in infancy
• Discovering a consistent self (from birth on)
• Discovering ‘self as agent’ (from 4 months on)
• Discovering the ‘me-self’ (as the child approaches 18 months)
• Social relationships in infancy: attachment and development
• Bowlby’s theory of attachment
• Measuring the quality of attachment
• What causes secure or insecure attachments?
• Attachment and development
• Temperament
• Measuring temperament in babies
• Cultural differences in temperament
• Temperament and development
• Temperament and attachment
• In conclusion
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary




PART II: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT FROM INFANCY TO ADULTHOOD




• Chapter 5: Language
• What is language?
• Could other species learn to use human language?
• Patterns in language development
• Early days
• The first months of life
• Discovering words
• Comprehending the meaning of words
• Building a vocabulary
• Vocabulary, culture and experience
• Grammar
• Responding to grammar
• Producing grammatical utterances
• Using grammar to reveal meaning
• Working on the rules of syntax
• Reflecting on language
• Theories of language development
• Biology and language
• Chomsky and innate mechanisms for language
• Evidence for the LAD
• Maturation and development
• Identifying grammatical universals
• Modifications to Chomsky’s theory
• Grammar from cognitive and social processes
• Grammar and the structure of social meanings
• Scaffolding, infant-directed speech and language
• Building blocks for conversations
• Connectionism and dynamic systems approaches
• In conclusion
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary



• Chapter 6: Reasoning and Conceptual Understanding
• Logic, reasoning and development
• The nature of logic
• Piaget and the development of reasoning
• Sensori-motor intelligence: birth to 18 months
• Pre-operational reasoning: 18 months to 7 years
• Concrete operations: 7 to 11 years
• Formal operations: from 12 years on
• Critiques of Piaget’s theory
• Alternative interpretations of failure in Piaget’s tasks
• The need to study mental processes more directly
• Challenging the importance of logical structures
• Mental models and logical reasoning
• Transitive inferences from mental models
• Logic, mental models and the development of reasoning
• Reasoning and knowledge
• Logical necessity
• Literacy, mathematics and formal reasoning
• Cultural tools and cognitive development
• Cognitive development in adolescence
• Heuristic reasoning
• Heuristic reasoning, perception and memory
• The ‘availability’ heuristic
• The ‘representativeness’ heuristic
• Is heuristic reasoning rational?
• The development of heuristic reasoning
• The development of knowledge
• Concept formation
• Conceptual organization
• Core concepts
• Conceptual understanding, causality and reasoning
• Making causal connections
• Understanding what is alive: a case study
• Conceptual change from causal understanding
• Developmental stages versus domain-specific knowledge
• Novices and experts
• Developing from novice to expert?
• In conclusion
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary



• Chapter 7: Memory, Problem Solving and Mechanisms of Cognitive Development
• The development of memory
• Recognition and recall
• Does the ability to recognize things change in childhood?
• Developmental change in recall
• Conceptual understanding and developmental change in recall
• Item familiarity
• Causal understanding and recall
• Reconstruction and recall
• Everyday recall
• Children’s eyewitness testimony
• Scripts and autobiographical memory
• Deliberate memorizing
• Understanding the point of the activity
• Strategies for remembering
• Meta-cognitive awareness
• Does the physical capacity of memory change in childhood?
• The development of problem-solving
• New insights from studying knowledge in action
• Knowledge and rules for reasoning
• Information processing, performance and knowledge
• The process of planning
• Strategies in planning
• The development of trial and error
• The development of means–ends analysis
• Task-specific knowledge and means–ends planning
• Becoming an expert problem solver
• Generalizing problem-solving skills through analogy
• Can young children draw analogies?
• Using analogies in problem solving
• Mechanisms of cognitive change
• Microgenetic methods for studying the process of change
• Strategy selection and cognitive change: a new view of development
• Siegler’s ‘overlapping waves’ theory
• Discovering new strategies
• New strategies from existing procedures
• Creative discovery from problem-solving processes
• Social processes in the development of problem solving
• Observation and imitation
• Collaborating with other children
• Learning from apprenticeship
• In conclusion
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary



• Chapter 8: Individual Differences in Cognition
• Individual differences and IQ
• The concept of IQ
• Historical origins
• A psychometric definition of intelligence
• IQ scores
• Does general intelligence exist?
• Teasing out factors in intelligence
• A new theory of intelligence
• Measuring processing speed
• Individual variation in intelligence and genetics
• Does intelligence develop through childhood?
• Predicting future performance from measures of IQ
• Intelligence as an explanation of individual differences
• Modern psychometric measures of individual differences
• Psychometrics and creativity
• Process accounts of individual differences in cognition
• Genes
• Social processes and individual differences
• Individual characteristics and cognitive development
• The process of creativity
• Developing differently
• Diagnosing developmental abnormalities
• Delayed cognitive development
• General factors in developmental delay
• Specific developmental disabilities
• Atypical cognitive development
• In conclusion
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary




PART III: SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT FROM INFANCY TO ADULTHOOD




• Chapter 9: Understanding Other People
• Becoming a folk psychologist
• Discovering intentions
• Discovering the psychology of desire
• Discovering beliefs
• The ‘false belief’ task
• ‘Appearance/reality’ tasks
• Do 4-year-olds develop a ‘theory of mind’?
• Factors affecting the discovery of the mind
• Social interactions and the growth of psychological insight
• Cognitive processing power and representations of others
• Biological bases for discovering the mind
• Autism and the failure of mind-reading
• The clinical syndrome of autism
• What causes autism?
• The development of autism
• Empathy and sympathy
• The origins of empathy
• Empathy and sympathy and personal distress
• The development of sympathy versus personal distress
• Right feeling, right behaviour
• Gender differences in insight, empathy and sympathy
• Psychopathy and the failure of sympathy
• The clinical syndrome of antisocial personality disorder (APD)
• What causes APD?
• In conclusion
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary



• Chapter 10: Personality and Identity
• The development of personality
• Traits and types
• Studying the structure of personality
• Personality traits
• Types
• Traits, types and development
• Infant temperament and adult personality
• Developing a consistent personality
• Setting the tone of the reaction–evocation cycle
• ‘Reality’ and the power of the reaction–evocation cycle
• Working to maintain the familiar reaction–evocation cycle
• Developmental processes in personality
• Stable traits, changing behaviour
• Changing roles and changing emphases
• Cultural processes in personality development
• Change and consistency through the lifespan
• Life trajectories, transitions and turning points
• Developing a personal identity
• The nature of personal identity
• Self-concepts in childhood and adolescence
• Developmental processes in the evolution of self concepts
• Continuities in self-concepts
• Adolescent identity formation
• Culture, class, ethnicity, race, gender and identity
• Childhood
• Universal and specific processes in conceptualizing self
• Culture and the content of children’s self-concepts
• Gender and ethnic identity in childhood
• Adolescence
• Is the adolescent identity crisis a cultural artefact?
• Culture and adolescent identity formation
• Identity formation in ethnic minorities
• Gender and sexual identity in adolescence
• In conclusion
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary



• Chapter 11: Social Relationships
• Families and development
• Parenting styles, emotional development and self-esteem
• Parenting styles
• The impact of parenting styles on development
• Culture, parenting style and development
• Parenting style and socio-economic class
• Fathers, mothers and parenting
• Family structure and development
• Siblings
• Divorce
• Children’s reactions to divorce
• Divorce and development
• Divorce and poverty
• Parental conflict
• The absent father
• Children without parents
• Peer relationships
• The development of social interactions
• Social relationships in preschool children
• Social relationships in middle childhood
• Social relationships in adolescence
• From platonic friendship to romance
• Culture and the development of peer relationships
• Information technology and friendships
• Brains and adolescent behaviour
• Social status
• Measuring social status
• What determines social status?
• Developmental outcomes, rejection and bullying
• In conclusion
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary



• Chapter 12: Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviour
• Evolutionary theories
• The problem of prosocial behaviour
• Beyond biology
• The importance of empathy
• Hoffman’s theory
• Does empathy explain prosocial behaviour?
• Prosocial behaviour doesn’t always reflect empathy
• Empathic ability is not enough to ensure prosocial behaviour
• Being selective with empathic concern
• An overview of the role of empathy
• The development of moral reasoning
• Piaget’s account of the development of morality
• Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning
• Kohlberg, gender and the ethic of care
• Kohlberg, culture and ‘ethical imperialism’
• Kohlberg, children, everyday dilemmas and distributive justice
• A stage model of moral reasoning?
• Distinguishing moral and social rules
• Moral reasoning and moral behaviour
• Conscience and moral identity
• The origins of conscience in early childhood
• Conscience and the development of moral emotions
• Moral identity and moral behaviour
• ‘Saints’ and ‘moral exemplars’
• Individual differences in prosocial and antisocial tendencies
• Genetics
• The child’s inheritance
• Genes and families
• Parents and families
• Early parenting and pro- or antisocial life trajectories
• Moral development and parenting styles beyond infancy
• Are there crimogenic families?
• Communities and peer groups
• ‘Just’ and ‘unjust’ communities
• Peer groups
• Explaining evil
• A dynamic systems perspective
• In conclusion
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading
• Revision summary



• Chapter 13: Toward a New View of Development
• Exercises
• Suggested further reading