Psychology

Words are the building blocks of language. An understanding of how words are learned is thus central to any theory of language acquisition. Although there has been a surge in our understanding of children's vocabulary growth, theories of word learning focus primarily on object nouns. Word learning theories must explain not only the learning of object nouns, but also the learning of other, major classes of words — verbs and adjectives. Verbs form the hub of the sentence because they determine the sentence's argument structure. Researchers throughout the world recognize how our understanding of language acquisition can be at best partial if we cannot comprehend how verbs are learned. This book enters the relatively uncharted waters of early verb learning, focusing on the universal, conceptual foundations for verb learning, and how these foundations intersect with the burgeoning language system.

While the period of transition from adolescence to adulthood has become a recent focus for developmental psychologists and child mental health practitioners, the full role of the family during this period is only beginning to be explored. Many compelling questions, of interest to anyone involved in adolescence research, remain unanswered. To what extent do family experiences influence the way one navigates through emerging adulthood? How do we begin to understand the interplay between adolescents' contexts and their development and well-being? This book offers an accessible synthesis of research, theories, and perspectives on the family processes that contribute to development. Chapters cover a wide variety of topics surrounding the link between family processes and individual development, including adolescent romantic relationships, emotion regulation, resilience in contexts of risk, and socio-cultural and ethnic influences on development. Drawing on diverse research and methodological approaches that include direct family observations, interviews, and narrative analyses, this volume presents cutting-edge conceptual and empirical work on the key developmental tasks and challenges in the transition between adolescence and adulthood.

Hundreds of thousands of children are forced or legally recruited combatants in no fewer than 70 warring parties across the world. In addition to these child soldiers, thousands of youth voluntarily participate in politically related conflict. Why, how, and in what capacities are such large numbers of teenagers involved in war, and how are they affected? This book brings together world experts in an evidence-based volume to thoroughly understand and document the intricacies of youth who have had substantial involvement in political violence. Contributors argue that the assumption that youth are automatically debilitated by the violence they experience is much too simplistic: effective care for youth must include an awareness of their motives and beliefs, the roles they played in the conflict, their relationships with others, and the opportunities available to them after their experiences with war. The book suggests that the meaning youth make of a conflict may protect them from mental harm.

Humans' first languages may have been expressed through sign. Today, sign languages have been found around the world, including communities that do not have access to education or literacy. In addition to serving as a primary medium of communication for deaf communities, they have become among the most popular choices for second language study by hearing students. The status of sign languages as complex and complete languages that are clearly the linguistic “equal” of spoken languages is no longer questioned. Research on the characteristics of visual languages has blossomed since the 1960s, and careful study of deaf children’s development of sign language skills is pursued to obtain information to promote deaf children’s development. Equally important, the study of how children learn sign language provides excellent theoretical insights into how the human brain acquires and structures sign languages. In the same sense that cross-linguistic research has led to a better understanding of how language affects development, cross-modal research allows us to study the acquisition of language in the absence of a spoken phonology. This book provides cogent summaries of what is known about early gestural development, interactive processes adapted to visual communication, and the processes of semantic, syntactic and pragmatic development in sign. It addresses theoretical as well as applied questions, often with a focus on aspects of language which are (or perhaps are not) related to the modality of the language.

Throughout history there have been efforts to help deaf children develop spoken language through which they could have full access to the hearing world. These efforts, although pursued seriously and with great care, frequently proved fruitless and often resulted only in passionate arguments over the efficacy of particular approaches. Although some deaf children did develop spoken language, there was little evidence to suggest that this development had been facilitated by any particular educational approach, and moreover, many, even most deaf children — especially those with profound loss — never develop spoken language at all. Recent technological advances, however, have led to more positive expectations for deaf children's acquisitions of spoken language: innovative testing procedures for hearing allow for early identification of loss which leads to intervention services during the first weeks and months of life. Programmable hearing aids allow more children to make use of residual hearing abilities. Children with the most profound losses are able to reap greater benefits from cochlear-implant technologies. At the same time, there have been great advances in research into the processes of deaf children's language development and the outcomes they experience. As a result, we are for the first time accruing a sufficient base of evidence and information to allow reliable predictions about children's progress which will, in turn, lead to further advances. This book presents information on the new world evolving for deaf and hard-of-hearing children and the improved expectations for their acquisition of spoken language.

This book provides a review of key studies that have shaped the way we view homophobia in educational contexts. Using theories and ideas drawn from various disciplines, the book demonstrates how bullying is a complex social process wherein perpetrators are supported by active confederates, passive bystanders and indifferent onlookers. Homophobic Bullying includes primary data drawn from various studies that have been conducted together with discussions of key studies conducted by other international researchers. A key feature of this book is the integration of primary quantitative and qualitative data, case studies from parents, and reports of recent legal actions. Exemplar lesson plans developed for the U.K. education system are provided. Finally, this book looks to the future and the changing face of schools, the gradual erosion of homophobia as an accepted ‘norm’ within society and the insitutions that train future generations.

This book provides qualitative researchers with a guide to inquiry that learns from, with and about children.  From fieldwork done during participant observation, to focus groups and depth interviews, to the use of artwork, photography, play and metaphors, viable methods to foreground children’s views are featured. The tools for child-centered research and its interpretation are drawn from both academic and applied qualitative inquiry, providing broad instruction across a range of kid-attuned approaches. The book takes stock of a blossoming world-wide child-centered research movement, and its promise of better grasping children’s lives. Child-focused inquiry, the book insists, has relevance to both academic theory and practical application, including public policy.

International Perspectives on Youth Conflict and Development brings together essays discussing the social, political, and economic contexts of youth conflict across fourteen countries on seven continents. Contributors from around the world draw on research and interventions in order to describe young people's participation in armed conflict, fighting and social exclusion, from the time they enter the public sphere to adulthood, as defined in their local environments. Case studies include children involved in armed conflict in Mozambique, Angola, the Philippines, and Nigeria; young people exposed to postwar tensions in Bosnia, Croatia, and South Africa; youth in the streets in Brazil and Colombia; Arab and Jewish youth in the ongoing crisis in Israel; children socialized to hate, mistrust, or exclude those of other ethnic, economic, or social identities in the United States, Germany, and Korea; and young people experiencing the dramatic political and economic transition in China. Rather than focusing on character flaws and socio-cognitive deficits or other problems of individual youth, their families, or cultures, the volume examines youth conflict as a social practice embedded in local, national, and international processes. The volume aims to shift the foundation of youth conflict study from the more typical focus on maturation, behavior, and personality, to a characterization of youth as participants in society. It also expands the analysis of youth development to include societal problems such as political instability, unequal access to material resources, racism, and social injustice. Offering insights about the interdependent spheres of conflict involving young people, this compilation describes processes of a violent world rather than of violent youth.

Efforts to give preschool children a head start on academic skills like reading and mathematics instead rob them of play time both at home and school. Indeed, the scientific evidence suggests that eliminating play from the lives of children is taking preschool education in the wrong direction. This brief but compelling book provides a strong counterargument to the rising tide of didactic instruction on preschool classrooms. The book presents scientific evidence in support of three points: children need both unstructured free time and playful learning under the gentle guidance of adults to best prepare for entrance into formal school; academic and social development are inextricably intertwined, so academic learning must not trump attention to social development; and learning and play are not incompatible. Rather, playful learning captivates children's minds in ways that support better academic and social outcomes as well as strategies for lifelong learning. This book reviews research supporting playful learning along with succinct policy and practice recommendations that derive from this research.

Moving into a senior boys' dorm at a co-ed New England preparatory school, I soon noticed vast behavioral differences among the students that I found hard to understand. In an environment of ivy-covered buildings, institutional goals of excellence and aspirations to Ivy League colleges, I observed that many girls worked themselves into a state of sleep deprivation and despair during exam period while the boys remained seemingly unconcerned and relaxed. I noticed that the girls felt the pressure to be “cute” and “perfect”, while the boys felt pressure to be “bad ass” and the “best at everything.” I learned that the boys thought that “it would suck” to be a girl and that one third of the girls would be male if given the chance. I noticed class and ethnic differences in how the students seemed to display their masculinity and femininity. From my vantage point of sitting in the back of the football and field-hockey buses, touring dorm rooms, listening to the words they used to describe each others' looks and sexuality, and listening to them discussing their academic and social pressures, competition, rumors, backstabbing, sex, and partying, I discovered that these boys and girls shared similar values, needs, and desires. Caught in the crossfire between cultural and institutional values of individuality, hierarchy and success, class and racial/ethnic differences, and society's expectations for gender appropriate behavior, these students faced conflicting pressures that affected both their social and academic success. This work provides insight into the costs of privilege as well as class, ethnic, and individual differences in the performance of gender. It reveals how the adolescent culture of this powerful group reflects and perpetuates larger cultural, institutional, class and ethnic values, gender ideals, and power structures, and ultimately exposes the underpinnings of the American character.