Child Development

This book provides a good foundation for understanding influences on children’s health and development. The volume brings together in a single reference source the world’s leading thinkers on children’s health and development. It sets out the basic concepts that underpin the study of child development and response to impairments to development, including attachment, changes in brain structure, and resilience. The book explores the idea of life-course development, explaining how experiences at each stage in a person’s life shapes his or her future. It goes on to example the relative contribution of societal, neighbourhood, school, family and individual influences to child well-being. This includes a look at the way these forces interact, such as when genes shape environments, and vice versa. The book summarises the evidence on the incidence and consequences of impairments to children’s health and development, covering both the majority of typical children and the minority who experience significant problems.

Contents: Introduction; Part I Key Concepts in Developmental Research: An ethological approach to personality development, Mary D. Salter Ainsworth and John Bowlby; Are there biological programming effects for psychological development?: findings from a study of Romanian adoptees, Michael Rutter, Thomas G. O'Connor and the English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) Study Team; Pubertal transitions in health, George C. Patton and Russell Viner; The life course as developmental theory, Glen H. Elder;Jr Implications of resilience concepts for scientific understanding, Michael Rutter. Part II Influences on Development: Gene-environment interdependence, Michael Rutter; How people make their own environments: a theory of genotype -> environment effects, Sandra Scarr and Kathleen McCartney; Genetic influences on measures of the environment: a systematic review, Kenneth S. Kendler and Jessica H. Baker; How social experiences influence the brain, Frances A. Champagne and James P. Curley; Cognitive and affective development in adolescence, Laurence Steinberg; Does stress damage the brain?, J. Douglas Bremner; The influence of family, school, and the environment, Barbara Maughan; How families matter in child development: reflections from research on risk and resilience, Ann S. Masten and Anne Shaffer; Socioeconomic status and child development, Robert H. Bradley and Robert F. Corwyn; Lasting consequences of the summer learning gap, Karl L. Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle and Linda Steffel Olson; Personality differences in childhood and adulthood: measurement, development and consequences, Rebecca Shiner and Avshalom Caspi. Part III Impairment and Disorder: 10-year research update review: the epidemiology of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders: I methods and public health burden, E. Jane Costello, Helen Egger and Adrian Angold; 10-year research update review: the epidemiology of childhood and adolescent psychiatric disorders: II developmental epidemiology, E. Jane Costello, Debr

Barbara Maughan, Professor, Research Fellow, Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, UK and Michael Little, Professor, Director, Social Research Unit at Dartington, UK/University of Chicago, USA