Psychology

Language acquisition is a contentious field of research occupied by cognitive and developmental psychologists, linguists, philosophers, and biologists. Perhaps the key component to understanding how language is mastered is explaining word acquisition. At twelve months, an infant learns new words slowly and laboriously; but at twenty months, he or she acquires an average of ten new words per day. How can we explain this phenomenal change? A theory of word acquisition deepens our understanding of the nature of language but also provides real insight into the workings of the developing mind. This book presents competing word acquisition theories that have emerged in the past decade. Each theory is presented by the researcher. The book provides introductory and summary chapters to help assess each theoretical model.

How can youth in different cultural communities forge identities and college pathways without losing ties to their communities? New evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, about how youth navigate across the cultural worlds of their families, schools, peers, and community programs, is advancing research, practice, and policies to open academic pipelines. This book examines the academic pipeline problem, as students, especially ethnic minority, immigrant, and low—income youth, leave school too early. It considers research, practice, and policies relating to opening both pathways and pipelines and bridges across the social sciences—developmental and social psychology, sociology, anthropology, and education—by integrating findings on five issues core to this problem. It aligns related models and evidence about how youth develop their identities as they navigate pathways from childhood through school to careers, with a new multi—level theory that addresses these issues. Evidence is drawn from an innovative blend of quantitative and qualitative methods, offering a diversity of cultural examples and breadth of references. Presenting tools to help build a common language among researchers, educators, and policymakers, this book speaks to the rising global awareness for opening higher education to immigrant, ethnic minority, and low—income youth.

This book outlines the recent revolutionary work in cognitive science formulating a “probabilistic model” theory of learning and development. It provides an accessible and clear introduction to the probabilistic modeling in psychology, including causal model, Bayes net, and Bayesian approaches. It also outlines new cognitive and developmental psychological studies of statistical and causal learning, imitation and theory-formation, new philosophical approaches to causation, and new computational approaches to the representation of intuitive concepts and theories. This book brings together research in all of these areas of cognitive science, with chapters by researchers in all these disciplines. Understanding causal structure is a central task of human cognition. Causal learning underpins the development of our concepts and categories, our intuitive theories, and our capacities for planning, imagination, and inference. This new work uses the framework of probabilistic models and interventionist accounts of causation in philosophy in order to provide a rigorous formal basis for “theory theories” of concepts and cognitive development. Moreover, the causal learning mechanisms this interdisciplinary research program has uncovered go dramatically beyond both the traditional mechanisms of nativist theories such as modularity theories, and empiricist ones such as association or connectionism. The chapters cover three topics: the role of intervention and action in causal understanding, the role of causation in categories and concepts, and the relationship between causal learning and intuitive theory formation. Though coming from different disciplines, the chapters converge on showing how we can use our own actions and the evidence we observe in order to accurately learn about the world.

The premise of this volume is that the disciplines of cognitive neuroscience, development, and psychopathology are complementary in the study of human perception and attention. Although each discipline emerges from a decidedly different and sometimes even incompatible worldview, together they lead to better science. Development is the study of the myriad of changes that occur over the lifetime of an individual, with the focus on uncovering universal categories and structure in that change. In contrast to this emphasis on universals, the study of psychopathology is premised entirely on the observation of differences between individuals, as researchers of psychopathology try to make sense of a vast array of debilitating conditions, histories, and experiences that lead to specific and usually deleterious outcomes among specific individuals, groups, or populations. The study of cognitive neuroscience offers researchers a wide variety of tools with which to examine specific cognitive functions and behaviors, with a focus on the mechanisms internal to the brain, which underlie functional and behavioral outcomes, especially specific and fine-grained analyses of the neural underpinning of behavior. With the integration of these three areas of scholarship, the emphasis in this volume is on the functional role that neural-based behavior plays in the larger social-emotional-intellectual world and how these neural processes develop over time among typically developing children and adults as well as those with anxiety, depression, autism, dyslexia, and childhood experiences of abuse and neglect.

This book explores the connections and tensions between creativity research and developmental psychology, two fields that have largely progressed independently of each other until now. Scholars in psychology investigated the emergence of new ideas, and the development of people and situations that bring them to completion. Findings are based on the observation that both creativity and development are processes that occur in complex systems, in which later stages or changes emerge from the prior state of the system. In the 1970s and 1980s, creativity researchers shifted their focus from personality traits to cognitive and social processes, and the co-authors of this volume are some of the influential figures in this transition. Readers will learn about the system activities resulting into three interconnected themes: the outcomes of creativity and development that emerge from dynamic undertakings, the interrelation between individual and social underpinnings, and the role of mediating artifacts and domains in development and creativity.

This book examines the cognitive underpinnings of deaf individuals' learning. The book is written by scientists from different disciplines, which rarely interact in other realms. In this book they share their ideas. This book contributes to the science of learning by describing and testing theories that might either over or underestimate the role that audition or vision plays in learning and memory, and by shedding light on multiple pathways for learning. International experts in cognitive psychology, brain sciences, cognitive development, and deaf children offer a unique, integrative examination of cognition and learning, with discussions on their implications for deaf education. Each chapter focuses primarily on the intersection of research in cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and deaf education. The general theme of the book is that deaf and hearing individuals differ to some extent in early experience, brain development, cognitive functioning, memory organization, and problem solving. Identifying similarities and differences among these domains provides new insights into potential methods for enhancing achievement in this traditionally under-performing population.

In this book two pairs of developmental psychologists take sides in a spirited debate over the theory of “emerging adulthood,” Jeffrey Arnett’s proposal that a new life stage has developed in between adolescence and young adulthood, lasting roughly from ages 18 to 25. Arnett and Jennifer Tanner argue that as young people around the world share demographic similarities such as longer education and later marriage, the 18-25 age period is best understood as entailing the rise of a new life stage of emerging adulthood. However, because the experiences of emerging adults worldwide vary according to cultural context, educational attainment, and social class, Arnett and Tanner suggest that there may not be one but many different emerging adulthoods. An important issue for this burgeoning area of inquiry is to explore and describe this variation. In contrast, Marion Kloep and Leo Hendry assert that stage theories have never been able to explain individual transitions across the life course; in their view, stage theories—including the theory of emerging adulthood--ought to be abolished altogether, and explanations found for the processes and mechanisms that govern human change at any age. This book provides the argument of “stage or process” in full-force, with vigorous disagreements, conflicting alternatives, some leavening humor, and ultimately even some common ground.

This latest volume in the Attention and Performance series focuses on two of the fastest moving research areas in cognitive and affective neuroscience — decision making and emotional processing. This book investigates the psychological and neural systems underlying decision making, and the relationship with reward, affect, and learning. In addition, it considers neurodevelopmental and clinical aspects of these issues, for example the role of decision making and reward in drug addiction. It also looks at the applied aspects of this knowledge to other disciplines, including the growing field of Neuroeconomics. After an introductory chapter, the book is arranged according to the following themes: psychological processes underlying decision-making; neural systems of decision-making; neural systems of emotion, reward and learning, and neurodevelopmental and clinical aspects.

Research has traditionally shown high schools to be hostile environments for gay youth. Boys have used homophobia to prove their own masculinity and distance themselves from homosexuality. While this has been a consistent finding for over three decades, The Declining Significance of Homophobia tells a different story. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews of teenage boys in three British high schools, Dr. Mark McCormack shows how heterosexual male students’ attitudes toward their gay peers have dramatically improved. Heterosexual male students are proud of their pro-gay attitudes and friendship with openly gay students. Indeed, homosexuality is not an important variable in determining a boys’ popularity. However, The Declining Significance of Homophobia goes beyond documenting this important shift. It also examines how decreased homophobia results in the expansion of gendered behaviors available to teenage boys. Dr. McCormack shows that in these British schools, heterosexual boys are able to develop meaningful and loving friendships. Furthermore, their friendships span across different groups of boys, so that jocks can befriend those more concerned with their school work. These boys have replaced peer violence, misogyny and homophobia with hugging and emotional intimacy. Free from the constant threat of social marginalization, boys are able to speak about once-feminized activities without censure. Incisive and accessible, The Declining Significance of Homophobia is essential reading for all those interested in the damage that homophobia brings to both gay and straight youth. Whether teacher, parent, student or academic, you will find this research to be remarkably uplifting. The sophisticated analysis and accessible language make this a truly insightful examination of the changing nature of teenage masculinity.

This book is about digital spaces that can support positive youth development. This book is driven by values and by a sense of urgency —as the design of our digital landscape is increasingly guided by commercial purposes and not by developmental concerns. Designers of digital landscapes that promote positive development, must take into consideration the children’s social, emotional, cognitive, physical, civic and spiritual needs. But should also consider the unique design features of each technology and the practices and policies that shape different interactions in the digital landscape. Although this book is about new technologies, it is inspired by an old question: “How should we live?” This book presents an approach to help children gain the technological literacies of the 21st century while developing a sense of identity, values and purpose. Too often youth’s experiences with technology are framed in negative terms. This book acknowledges problems and risks, and takes an interventionist perspective. It invites readers to not only observe and describe the digital landscape, but to actively engage in co-designing it by focusing on positive behaviors that can be promoted by new technologies. Based on over a decade and a half of research, this book provides a theoretical framework for guiding the implementation of experiences that take advantage of new technologies to support learning and personal development, as well as examples from concrete experiences. These engage children in playful learning by supporting content creation, creativity, choices of conduct, communication, collaboration and community building. These are the six C’s proposed by the Positive Technological Development framework presented in this book. They can guide the design and the evaluation of experiences from early childhood to adolescence. This book offers a possible path to help children out of the playpens into the playgrounds of this technological era.