Margaret Harris

George Butterworth

Developmental Psychology: A Student's Handbook is a major textbook that provides an up-to-date account of theory and research in the rapidly-changing field of child development. Margaret Harris and George Butterworth have produced an outstanding volume that includes recent research from Britain, Europe, and the USA. The text is designed for undergraduate students who have little or no prior knowledge of developmental psychology. Key features include: Specially designed textbook features, such as key term definitions, chapter summaries, and annotated further reading sections Over 95 figures and tables, to illustrate principles described in the text Additional boxed material, to add further insight and aid understanding Clear, user-friendly layout, to make topics easy to locate The book places developmental psychology in its historical context, tracing the emergence of the field as an independent discipline at the end of the 19th century, and following the radical changes that have occurred in our understanding of children's development since then. The development of the child is covered in sequence: through conception, pre-natal development, birth, infancy, and the pre-school years, to the achievements of the school years, and the changes that occur during adolescence. Each period is addressed in terms of cognitive, social, and linguistic development, including discussion of reading, spelling, and mathematical development. There is also consideration of comparative research concerning the development of cognitive abilities in other primates. Developmental Psychology: A Student's Handbook is essential reading for all undergraduate students of developmental psychology. It will also be of interest to those in education and healthcare studying child development.

A Student's Handbook

Developmental Psychology

Although central to theories of cognitive development, the concept of representation remains subtle and elusive. This collection of papers reflects a variety of individual emphases, none of which are mutually exclusive. The papers have been arranged in four groups, mainly along lines of related subject matter but also to illustrate different aspects of the development of representation. In Piaget's theory, representation is defined as "the making present of an object which is not present to the senses" (Furth 1969). Representation has both a figurative and an operative aspect. The organisation of the content of the representation (the figurative aspect) depends on the operations of thought or on the schemes co-ordinating action. This use of the term is applic able both to internal representations, such as visual images and to external representation, such as children's drawings. However, it presupposes no necessary relation between a mental image and a graphic representation. The first part of the book consists of papers on children's drawing. The operative aspect of representation emerges in the serial ordering problems encountered by young children who produce "tadpole" figures (Freeman Chapter 1). The figurative aspect of graphic representation is vividly illustrated by the drawings of the autistic child Nadia (Selfe Chapter 2). One further issue which emerges concerns the relation between linguistic and graphic representation.

The Child’s Representation of the World

Paul Light

Originally published in 1993, the study of cognitive development in children had moved from a focus on the intellectual processes of the individual studied in relative isolation, as in the classic work of Piaget, to a concern in the 1970s and 1980s with social cognition characterized by Vygotsky's views. In the years following, the trend toward an understanding of the situated nature of cognition had evolved even further and the extent to which thinking and knowing are inextricably linked to contextual constraints was at last being defined. Experts of international repute, the authors of this important book examine the recent literature on situated cognition in children. They explain contextual sensitivity in relation to ecological theories of cognition, and contrast intuitive reasoning in mathematical and other scientific domains with the failure of such reasoning in formal school contexts. Centrally concerned with the question of generalizability and transfer of knowledge from one situation to another, the contributors point to practical implications for understanding how intellectual competence can be made to generalize between "informal" and "formal" situations.

Ways of Learning and Knowing

Context and Cognition

Lo scopo della psicologia dello sviluppo è descrivere e spiegare i cambiamenti nel comportamento e nelle attività psicologiche dal periodo prenatale fino alla vecchiaia. Il volume affronta in modo approfondito i principali temi della psicologia dello sviluppo dal periodo prenatale fino alla vecchiaia, esaminandone sia gli aspetti biologici che quelli culturali. Nel testo sono presentate le più importanti teorie dello sviluppo in una prospettiva storica e, in particolare, quelle di Piaget, Vygotskij e Bowlby, che permettono di comprendere gli orientamenti della ricerca contemporanea e forniscono una sintesi moderna rispetto alle radicali posizioni innatiste e ambientaliste. Il testo presenta inoltre recenti ipotesi, sostenute da evidenze sperimentali, che hanno portato a parziali revisioni di queste teorie. Il volume fornisce in tal modo una visione complessiva e aggiornata delle questioni teoriche e metodologiche più rilevanti della psicologia dello sviluppo ed è consigliato per studenti universitari, insegnanti, operatori del settore, genitori e per tutti coloro che sono interessati a questa disciplina. l curatore di questa edizione ha inoltre apportato integrazioni e adattamenti specifici per il pubblico italiano. A tal fine, sono state anche illustrate recenti ricerche italiane rilevanti per i temi trattati nel testo.

George Butterworth

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