Developmental cascades : building the infant mind

Bibliographic Information

Developmental cascades : building the infant mind

Lisa M. Oakes and David H. Rakison

Oxford University Press, 2020

Available at  / 1 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

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).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Why Understanding Development is Hard 2. Developmental Mechanisms: Eliminating the Dichotomy 3. The "Humpty-Dumpty Problem" In the Study of Development 4. The Role of Constraints in Development 5. Developmental Cascades: A New Framework to Understand Change 6. The Development of Looking Behavior in Infancy 7. Cascades and Object Knowledge 8. The Development of Knowledge of Animates and Inanimates in Infancy 9. Conclusions: Applications, Generalizations, Challenges, and a Call to Action References Index

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top