Children's Knowledge, Beliefs and Feelings about Nations and National Groups

• By Martyn Barrett

This book provides a state-of-the-art account of how people's subjective sense of national identity, and attitudes towards countries and national groups, develop through the course of childhood and adolescence. It offers a comprehensive review of the research which has been conducted into:

. children's understanding of nations as geographical territories and as political, historical and cultural communities

. children's knowledge, beliefs and feelings about the people who belong to different national groups

. children's attitudes towards, and emotional attachment to, their own country and national group.

The authors elaborate on the developmental patterns that have been found to emerge, contextualized by a consideration and evaluation of the theoretical frameworks which can be used to explain these patterns.

Written by the leading international authority in this field, and reporting (in collaboration with his colleagues) the findings from two major transnational research projects, this book will be invaluable to postgraduate students and researchers working in this field. The book will also be of great benefit to undergraduate students taking courses in Developmental Psychology, the Sociology of Childhood, and Education.

Published November 16th 2006 by Psychology Press.

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Reading Acquisition and Developmental Dyslexia

• By Liliane Sprenger-Charolles, Pascale Colé, Willy Serniclaes

Most studies on reading have been conducted with English-speaking subjects. It is crucial to also examine studies conducted in different languages, in order to highlight which aspects of reading acquisition and dyslexia appear to be language-specific, and which are universal.

Reading Acquisition and Developmental Dyslexia sheds new light on dyslexia and its relationship with reading acquisition, presenting two unique advancements in this area. Looking at studies conducted in different languages, the prerequisites of reading acquisition are examined, and the findings from studies of skilled adult readers are presented. The manifestations of developmental dyslexia and the main contemporary explanations for it are outlined, providing an in-depth, well researched discussion of the topic. The authors conclude by offering a new framework which could explain both reading acquisition and developmental dyslexia.

A fascinating book offering a unique insight into the topic of dyslexia, it will be of great interest to students and lecturers in cognitive psychology, educational psychology, and psycholinguistics, as well as those with a more everyday involvement with the disorder such as speech and language therapists.

Published October 26th 2006 by Psychology Press.

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The Resilience of Language

What Gesture Creation in Deaf Children Can Tell Us About How All Children Learn Language

• By Susan Goldin-Meadow

Imagine a child who has never seen or heard any language at all. Would such a child be able to invent a language on her own? Despite what one might guess, the children described in this book make it clear that the answer to this question is 'yes'. The children are congenitally deaf and cannot learn the spoken language that surrounds them. In addition, they have not yet been exposed to sign language, either by their hearing parents or their oral schools. Nevertheless, the children use their hands to communicate - they gesture - and those gestures take on many of the forms and functions of language. The properties of language that we find in the deaf children's gestures are just those properties that do not need to be handed down from generation to generation, but can be reinvented by a child de novo - the resilient properties of language. This book suggests that all children, deaf or hearing, come to language-learning ready to develop precisely these language properties. In this way, studies of gesture creation in deaf children can show us the way that children themselves have a large hand in shaping how language is learned.

Published April 5th 2005 by Psychology Press.

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Young Children's Thinking about Biological World

• By Giyoo Hatano, Kayoko Inagaki

Presents research on the topic of young children's naive biology, examining such theoretical issues as processes, conditions and mechanisms in conceptual development using the development of biological understanding as the target case.

Published April 12th 2002 by Psychology Press.

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Language Development and Social Interaction in Blind Children

• By Gina Conti-Ramsden, Miguel Perez-Pereira

This book provides an up-to-date account of blind children's developing communicative abilities with particular emphasis on social cognition and language acquisition from infancy to early school age. It purports to foster dialogue between those interested in the study of typically developing children and those interested in the development of children who are blind and to provide insights and new explanations of why the development of blind children may differ from that of sighted children. The book also aims to identify and examine current theoretical issues which are likely to be at the centre of developments in the fields of child language and developmental psychology.
Language Development and Social Interaction in Blind Children is also a timely book. The study of blind children's development constitutes a unique opportunity to study the effect of vision on development, and more specifically on the development of language and certain aspects of social cognition. Current interest in the development of "theory of mind" and perspective taking in language learning, make the case of blind children crucial to our understanding of certain aspects of psychological functioning. The book explores these issues, challenges some widely-held beliefs about the development of communication in blind children, and provides a cohesive picture of our knowledge to date.

Published September 9th 1999 by Psychology Press.

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The Foundation of Literacy

The Child's Acquisition of the Alphabetic Principle

• By Brian Byrne

This monograph brings together important research that the author and his colleagues at the University of New England have been conducting into the early stages of reading development, and makes a valuable contribution to the debate about literacy education. It should appeal to a broad audience since it is written in an entertaining and accessible style, with chapter summaries, and where appropriate short tutorials in relevant topics, in particular Learnability Theory (Chapter 1), levels of language structure (Chapter 2) and writing systems (Chapter 2).
It will be of interest to experimental psychologists concerned with the reading process, developmental psychologists interested in cognitive growth, educational psychologists interested in the application of experimental methods in the classroom situation, and teachers and teacher educators.

Published February 23rd 1998 by Psychology Press.

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Security of Attachment and the Social Development of Cognition

• By Elizabeth Meins

Security of Attachment and the Social Development of Cognition investigates how children's security of attachment in infancy is related to various aspects of their cognitive development over the preschool years. The book thus constitutes an ambitious attempt to build bridges between the domains of social and cognitive development, and as such addresses issues which are of increasing interest to developmental psychologists. In the first two chapters, Meins outlines Bowlby's attachment theory and the research which it has inspired, and develops the theme of a secure attachment relationship providing children with a sense of themselves as effective agents in their interactions with the world (self-efficacy).
The next five chapters describe a longitudinal study of a sample of children whose security of attachment was assessed in infancy. Security-related differences are reported in the areas of object/person permanence, language acquisition, symbolic play, maternal tutoring and theory of mind, but no differences were found in general cognitive ability. Meins argues that the wide-ranging advantages enjoyed by the securely attached children are best explained in terms of their greater self-efficacy and social flexibility, nurtured by a particular kind of early infant-mother interaction.
This book's major contribution is in its approach to explaining why securely attached children may be more self-effective and flexible in social interactions. Meins attempts to account for these differences within a Vygotskian framework, focusing on the secure dyad's greater ability to function within the zone of proximal development. She suggests that a mother's mind-mindedness (the propensity to treat one's infant as an individual with a mind) is an important factor in determining her ability to interact sensitively with her child. In the final chapter, Meins considers how the Vygotskian approach can complement and extend existing theories of attachment, and suggests some ways in which future research might address outstanding questions in this rapidly advancing field.

Published June 30th 1997 by Psychology Press.

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Knowing Children

Experiments in Conversation and Cognition

• By Michael Siegal

It has often been maintained that young children's knowledge is limited to perceptual appearances. In this "preoperational" stage of development, there are profound conceptual limitations in that they have little understanding of numerical and causal relations and are incapable of insight into the minds of others. Their apparent inability to perform well on traditional developmental measures has led researchers to accept a model of the young child as plagued by conceptual deficits. These ideas have had a major impact on educational programs. Many have accepted the view that the young are not ready for instruction and that their memory and understanding is vulnerable to distortion, especially in subjects such as mathematics and science. However, the second edition of this book provides further evidence that children's stage-like performance can frequently be reinterpreted in terms of a clash between the conversational worlds of adults and children. In many settings, children may not share an adult's well-meaning purpose or use of words in questioning. Under these conditions, they do not disclose the depth of their memory and understanding and may respond incorrectly even when they are certain of the right answer.
In this light, a different model of development emerges with significant implications for instruction in educational, health, and legal settings. It attributes more competence to young children than is frequently recognized and reflects the position that development in evolutionarily important domains is guided by implicit constraints on learning. It proposes that attention to young children's conversational experience is a powerful means to illustrate what they know.

Published May 9th 1997 by Psychology Press.

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Acquiring a Conception of Mind

A Review of Psychological Research and Theory

• By Peter Mitchell

It seems the mind has evolved into such a powerful form that we are able to go beyond knowing the world and move towards knowing the mind itself. Being able to comprehend the mind permits smooth social interaction, since it allows us to anticipate the future actions of those around us. The apparently effortless quality of social co-ordination belies the complex process of conceptualization and inference that is actually at work. The odyssey of childhood, especially in the early years, presents a topic for investigation and speculation.
A purpose of this book is to provide a thoroughly readable in-depth review of recent findings and theories about the development of understanding mind. In preparing this, a major goal was seen as composing text that is appealing in itself as a piece of writing. This book covers development from infancy to adulthood, and also considers related disorders of development especially autism. It goes beyond the narrow focus on the preschool years typical of most writings on the topic.
One of the main themes in the book concerns the role of language and communication in development. Language could serve as a tool that helps the child to think more in the abstract and the hypothetical, once removed from reality. Being able to communicate with language virtually means that we are able to hear the thoughts of those around us. We hear what they think from what they say. Communication could thus provide a major catalyst in promoting the development of an understanding of mind. Perhaps it is no coincidence that children with autism who supposedly have an impaired understanding of mind also have impairments in language and communication.

Published December 5th 1996 by Psychology Press.

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Parenting Behaviour and Children's Cognitive Development

• By Sara Meadows

The association between parents' behaviour and children's cognitive development is at the meeting place of several prominent theories of psychological development and a range of complex methodological and conceptual issues. On the one hand there are theories which argue that the impetus of development is within the child and is largely unaffected by his or her experience of social interaction: on the other are the commonsense experience of parents and educators, and the body of neo-Vygotskian theory, which would see the child's development as profoundly affected by social interaction or even constituted by it. The purpose of this book is to examine theories and evidence carefully in order to assess the causal links between parent behaviour and children's cognitive development.
There is a considerable amount of evidence that suggests an association between parents' behaviour and their children's cognitive development; but there are many possible explanations for this association, including direct effects of parental teaching styles on the children's learning and motivation, differential social class practices and opportunities, genetic resemblances, and methodological artifacts. A close and critical look at a wide range of research and of theory is necessary if the causal questions are to be clarified.
This book develops the current arguments about the nature and causes of cognitive development, providing a critical discussion of the available research and relating it to psychological theory. It is suitable for advanced students of psychology and education.

Published October 7th 1996 by Psychology Press.

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Approaches to the Development of Moral Reasoning

• By Peter E. Langford

The first part of the book offers a survey of current approaches to the development of moral reasoning: those of Freud, ego psychology, Piaget and Kohlberg. The approach of Kohlberg has been popular because he was able to give an impressive account of findings from the key method of interviews, the other crucial method being naturalistic observation of moral discourse. The accounts of interview evidence given by ego psychology and Piaget were less comprehensive and less impressive. Naturalistic studies have either been impressionistic or less detailed in their methods of analysis.
The second part of the book argues that the impressive nature of Kohlberg's later evidence for his view that moral reasoning passes through a sequence of stages is in part illusory, because his theory predicts that specific types of reply will show specific developmental patterns. However, as data are always reported in terms of stages, which amalgamate very disparate types of reply, it is impossible to know whether the specific types of reply follow their predicted developmental courses or not. Reasons given for assigning given types of reply to a stage are also often doubtful. This leads to discussion of studies that have reported findings in terms of specific types of reply (weakly interpretive methods), as opposed to Kohlberg's stage-based and strongly interpretive methods. Findings from these disconfirm Kohlberg's theory at several crucial points.
The second and third parts of the book also examine findings from non-Kohlbergian interviews and other methods, again advocating that weakly interpretive and largely descriptive presentation of findings is preferable to strongly interpretive techniques. It is argued that a wide variety of mechanisms suggested by the theories outlined in the first part of the book, as well as others drawn from general theories of personality development, are able to explain existing descriptive developmental findings. The task for the future is to assess the relative importance of these mechanisms.

Published April 10th 1995 by Psychology Press.

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The Development of Young Children's Social-Cognitive Skills

• By Michael A. Forrester

Understanding how young children begin to make sense out of the social world has become a major concern within developmental psychology. Over the last 25 years research in this area has raised a number of questions which mirror the confluence of interests from cognitive-developmental and social-developmental psychology. The aims of this book are to consider critically the major themes and findings within this growing social-cognitive developmental research, and to present a new theoretical framework for investigating children's social cognitive skills. Beyond being the first major review of the literature in this area, this synopsis articulates why contemporary theoretical ideas (e.g. information processing, Piagetian and social interactionist) are unlikely ever to provide the conceptual basis for understanding children's participative skills.
Building upon ideas both within and beyond mainstream developmental psychology, the "eco-structural" approach advocated seeks to draw together the advantages of the ecological approach in perceptual psychology with the considerable insights of the conversational analysts, child language researchers and Goffman's analysis of social interaction. This convergence is centred around the dynamic and participatory realities of engaging in conversational contexts, the locus for acquiring social cognitive skills.
The framework provides the building blocks for models of developmental social cognition which can accommodate dynamic aspects of children's conversational skills. This book then is a review of an important area of developmental psychology, a new perspective on how we can study children's participatory social-cognitive skills and a summary of supporting research for the framework advocated.

Published February 27th 1995 by Psychology Press.

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Autism and the Development of Mind

• By R. Peter Hobson

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate how the phenomenon of early childhood autism may cast light on issues that are central to our Understanding Of Normal Child Development - Issues Such As The Emotional origins of social experience and social understanding, the contribution of interpersonal relations to the genesis of symbolism and creative thought, and the role of intersubjectivity in the development of self. Drawing upon philosophical writings as well as empirical research on autism, the author challenges the individualistic and cognitive bias of much developmental psychology, and argues that early human development is founded upon a normal infant's capacity for distinct forms of "I - Thou" and "I - It" relatedness. To a large degree, autism may represent the psycho-pathological sequelae to biologically-based incapacities for social perception and interpersonal engagement.

Published February 27th 1995 by Psychology Press.

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The Understanding of Causation and the Production of Action

From Infancy to Adulthood

• By Peter Anthony White

This text is an attempt to trace out a line of development in the understanding of how things happen, from origins in infancy to mature forms in adulthood. There are two distinct but related ways in which people understand things as happening, denoted by the terms "causation" and "action". This book is concerned with both.; The central claim and organizing principle of the book is that, by the end of the second year of life, children have differentiated two core theories of how things happen. These theories deal with causation and action. The two theories have a common point of origin in the infant's experience of producing actions, but thereafter diverge, both in content and in realm of application. Once established, the core theories of causation and action never change, but form a permanent metaphysical underpinning on which subsequent developments in the understanding of how things happen are erected. The story of development is therefore largely the story of how further concepts become attached to integrated with the core theories. Although the developmental and adult literatures on causal understanding appear at first glance to have little in common, in fact this appearance is illusory, and the idea of two theories helps to bring the two literatures in contact with each other.; The book begins with a survey of the main philosophical ideas about causation and action. Following this, the possible origins of understanding in infancy are reviewed, and separate chapters then deal with the development of understanding of action and causation through childhood. This is then linked to the adult understanding of action and causation, and the literature on adult causal attribution and causal judgement is reviewed from this perspective.

Published February 22nd 1995 by Psychology Press.

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Analogical Reasoning in Children

• By Usha Goswami

Analogical reasoning is a fundamental cognitive skill, involved in classification, learning, problem-solving and creative thinking, and should be a basic building block of cognitive development. However, for a long time researchers have believed that children are incapable of reasoning by analogy. This book argues that this is far from the case, and that analogical reasoning may be available very early in development. Recent research has shown that even 3-year-olds can solve analogies, and that infants can reason about relational similarity, which is the hallmark of analogy.
The book traces the roots of the popular misconceptions about children's analogical abilities and argues that when children fail to use analogies, it is because they do not understand the relations underlying the analogy rather than because they are incapable of analogical reasoning. The author argues that young children spontaneously use analogies in learning, and that their analogies can sometimes lead them into misconceptions. In the "real worlds" of their classrooms, children use analogies when learning basic skills like reading, and even babies seem to use analogies to learn about the world around them.

Published August 24th 1993 by Psychology Press.

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Children's Drawings of the Human Figure

• By Maureen V. Cox

The human figure is one of the earliest topics drawn by the young child and remains popular throughout childhood and into adolescence. When it first emerges, however, the human figure in the child's drawing is very bizarre: it appears to have no torso and its arms, if indeed it has any, are attached to its head. Even when the figure begins to look more conventional the child must still contend with a variety of problems: for instance, how to draw the head and body in the right proportions and how to draw the figure in action.
In this book, Maureen Cox traces the development of the human form in children's drawings; she reviews the literature in the field, criticises a number of major theories which purport to explain the developing child's drawing skills and also presents new data.

Published June 15th 1993 by Psychology Press.

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Language Experience and Early Language Development

From Input to Uptake

• By Margaret Harris

Addresses one debate in language development, namely the relationship between children's language development and their language experience.

Published August 25th 1992 by Psychology Press.

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Social Interaction and the Development of Language and Cognition

• By Alison F. Garton

For students of developmental psychology, this book should be a useful reference guide to the main concepts concerned with "motherese", scaffolding, socio-cognitive learning and joint problem solving. It is also a contribution to the debate on the influence of social behaviour on development.

Published January 22nd 1992 by Psychology Press.

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Phonological Skills and Learning to Read

• By Peter Bryant, Usha Goswami

This book sets out to integrate recent exciting research on the precursors of reading and early reading strategies adopted by children in the classroom. It aims to develop a theory about why early phonological skills are crucial in learning to read, and shows how phonological knowledge about rhymes and other units of sound helps children learn about letter sequences when beginning to be taught to read.
The authors begin by contrasting theories which suggest that children's phonological awareness is a result of the experience of learning to read and those that suggest that phonological awareness precedes, and is a causal determinant of, reading. The authors argue for a version of the second kind of theory and show that children are aware of speech units, called onset and rime, before they learn to read and spell. An important part of the argument is that children make analogies and inferences about these letter sequences in order to read and write new words.

Published December 25th 1990 by Psychology Press.

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Development According to Parents

• By W. Andrews Collins, Jacqueline J. Goodnow

To their everyday life with children, parents bring a number of ideas about development and about parenting. Some of these ideas are about their own children and about themselves as parents. Others are more general: ideas, for instance, about what babies are like, how children change with age, what kinds of affection and control they need, the responsibilities of mothers and fathers, or the degree of influence each parent has over the way a child develops. Moreover, the ideas that parents hold, shape their actions with children and the way they assess both their children and their own performance as parents.
With the recognition of parental thinking as a powerful factor in family life, research has turned to the study of this `everyday' or `informal' psychology. Some of the studies deal with the nature of parents' ideas: What ideas are held? Which are most widely shared? How do these ideas differ from one another? Some deal with the sources of parents' ideas: with the factors that give rise to differences among parents from different backgrounds (different cultures, different economic groups, different degrees of experience with children). Others concentrate on the consequences of parents' ideas for themselves and for children.
This monograph summarizes the research with an eye to several audiences (researchers, clinicians, educators) and with an emphasis on the questions that remain. A major goal is to point not only to significant gaps, but also to some specific ways in which they might be addressed by further research.

Published December 1st 1990 by Psychology Press.

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