Lisa M. Oakes

Lisa M. Oakes, Vanessa Lobue, and Marianella Casasola's Infancy: The Development of the Whole Child unites historically important and cutting-edge theories and research to illustrate the development of the whole child from birth to age three. Topically organized and written in a conversational tone, the text illustrates the interconnected nature of development through links within its bio-psycho-social coverage. Through its inclusive approach, students see individual similarities and differences in development as a function of factors such as culture, language experience, parenting style, and socioeconomic status. Stories from the authors' own experiences with infants highlight connections between research and parenting, social policy, and everyday contexts, effectively bringing the topics to life for students. Included with this title: LMS Cartridge: Import this title’s instructor resources into your school’s learning management system (LMS) and save time. Don’t use an LMS? You can still access all of the same online resources for this title via the password-protected Instructor Resource Site.

Children take their first steps, speak their first words, and learn to solve many new problems seemingly overnight. Yet, each change reflects previous developments in the child across a range of domains, and each change provides opportunities for future development. Developmental Cascades proposes a new framework for understanding development by arguing that change can be explained in terms of the events that occur at one point in development, which set the stage or cause a ripple effect for the emergence or development of different abilities, functions, or behavior at another point in time. It is argued that these developmental cascades are influenced by different kinds of constraints that do not have a single foundation: they may originate from the structure of the child's nervous system and body, the physical or social environment, or knowledge and experience. These constraints occur at multiple levels of processing, change over time, and both contribute to developmental cascades and are their product. Oakes and Rakison present an overview of this developmental cascade perspective as a general framework for understanding change throughout a lifespan, although it is applied primarily to cognitive development in infancy. Issues on how a cascade approach obviates the dichotomy between domain-general and domain-specific mechanisms and the origins of constraints are addressed. The framework is illustrated utilizing a wide range of domains (e.g., attachment, gender, motor development), and is examined in detail through application to three domains within infant cognitive development (looking behavior, object representations, and concepts for animacy).

The ability to remember people, objects, and events one encounters is critically important for effective functioning in the world. Remembering your mother's face, where you left your keys, and that it is your daughter's birthday tomorrow allow you to successfully manage your day, as well as your relationships with others. Questions about the processes of memory and how they develop are age old. In developmental science, research on memory has been prominent since the writings of Jean Piaget became available to English-speaking audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. This book focuses on recent empirical and theoretical advances in the study of memory development in infancy and early childhood. Both short-term and long-term memory are critically important for infants' learning about the world around them, as well as their development and maintenance of social relationships. Some of the most significant questions and concerns are addressed, with the aim of identifying areas of consensus and areas in which further theoretical and empirical work is necessary.