Child Development in Evolutionary Perspective


Book Description

Natural selection has operated as strongly or more so on the early stages of the lifespan as on adulthood. One evolved feature of human childhood is high levels of behavioral, cognitive, and neural plasticity, permitting children to adapt to a wide range of physical and social environments. Taking an evolutionary perspective on infancy and childhood provides a better understanding of contemporary human development, predicting and understanding adult behavior, and explaining how changes in the early development of our ancestors produced contemporary Homo sapiens.







Human Growth and Development


Book Description

Offering a study of biological, biomedical and biocultural approaches, this book is suitable for researchers, professors and graduate students across the interdisciplinary area of human development. It is presented in the form of lectures to facilitate student programming.




Patterns of Human Growth


Book Description

A revised edition of an established text on human growth and development from an anthropological and evolutionary perspective.




Handbook of Life Course Health Development


Book Description

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. ​This handbook synthesizes and analyzes the growing knowledge base on life course health development (LCHD) from the prenatal period through emerging adulthood, with implications for clinical practice and public health. It presents LCHD as an innovative field with a sound theoretical framework for understanding wellness and disease from a lifespan perspective, replacing previous medical, biopsychosocial, and early genomic models of health. Interdisciplinary chapters discuss major health concerns (diabetes, obesity), important less-studied conditions (hearing, kidney health), and large-scale issues (nutrition, adversity) from a lifespan viewpoint. In addition, chapters address methodological approaches and challenges by analyzing existing measures, studies, and surveys. The book concludes with the editors’ research agenda that proposes priorities for future LCHD research and its application to health care practice and health policy. Topics featured in the Handbook include: The prenatal period and its effect on child obesity and metabolic outcomes. Pregnancy complications and their effect on women’s cardiovascular health. A multi-level approach for obesity prevention in children. Application of the LCHD framework to autism spectrum disorder. Socioeconomic disadvantage and its influence on health development across the lifespan. The importance of nutrition to optimal health development across the lifespan. The Handbook of Life Course Health Development is a must-have resource for researchers, clinicians/professionals, and graduate students in developmental psychology/science; maternal and child health; social work; health economics; educational policy and politics; and medical law as well as many interrelated subdisciplines in psychology, medicine, public health, mental health, education, social welfare, economics, sociology, and law.




Evolutionary Perspectives on Infancy


Book Description

This unique volume is one of the first of its kind to examine infancy through an evolutionary lens, identifying infancy as a discrete stage during which particular types of adaptations arose as a consequence of certain environmental pressures. Infancy is a crucial time period in psychological development, and evolutionary psychologists are increasingly recognizing that natural selection has operated on all stages of development, not just adulthood. The volume addresses this crucial change in perspective by highlighting research across diverse disciplines including developmental psychology, evolutionary developmental psychology, anthropology, sociology, nutrition, and primatology. Chapters are grouped into four sections: Theoretical Underpinnings Brain and Cognitive Development Social/Emotional Development Life and Death Evolutionary Perspectives on Infancy sheds new light on our understanding of the human brain and the environments responsible for shaping the brain during early stages of development. This book will be of interest to evolutionary psychologists and developmental psychologists, biologists, and anthropologists, as well as scholars more broadly interested in infancy.




Avian Growth and Development


Book Description

This is the first re-appraisal in 50 years of concepts of development made in birds. This book is a case study in evolutionary diversification of life histories. Although birds have a rather uniform body plan and physiology, they exhibit marked variation in development type, parental care, and rate of growth. Altricial birds are fully dependent on their parents for warmth and nutrition and begin posthatching life in a more or less embryonic condition. At the other extreme, such superprecocial species as the megapodes are independent of all parental care from hatching, and the neonate, able to fly, resembles an adult bird. This book thus attempts to present an integrative perspective of organism biology, ecology, and evolution.




Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Development


Book Description

Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Development's Comprehensive coverage on current thinking about the impact of evolutionary theory on human development provides students with the most thorough grounding available in this area. Contributions by leading scholars and researchers expose students first-hand to the thinking of widely recognized experts and the exciting contributions they have been making to this field. To ensure accessibility in classroom settings, chapters have been written according to uniform guidelines for length and format, with cross-references between chapters and a style appropriate to upper-division undergraduate and beginning graduate psychology students. To further facilitate the use of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Development as supplemental classroom reading, the volume editors provide an introductory overview chapter and a concluding chapter that sums up the book.




Human Evolutionary Biology


Book Description

Wide-ranging and inclusive, this text provides an invaluable review of an expansive selection of topics in human evolution, variation and adaptability for professionals and students in biological anthropology, evolutionary biology, medical sciences and psychology. The chapters are organized around four broad themes, with sections devoted to phenotypic and genetic variation within and between human populations, reproductive physiology and behavior, growth and development, and human health from evolutionary and ecological perspectives. An introductory section provides readers with the historical, theoretical and methodological foundations needed to understand the more complex ideas presented later. Two hundred discussion questions provide starting points for class debate and assignments to test student understanding.




The Promise of Adolescence


Book Description

Adolescenceâ€"beginning with the onset of puberty and ending in the mid-20sâ€"is a critical period of development during which key areas of the brain mature and develop. These changes in brain structure, function, and connectivity mark adolescence as a period of opportunity to discover new vistas, to form relationships with peers and adults, and to explore one's developing identity. It is also a period of resilience that can ameliorate childhood setbacks and set the stage for a thriving trajectory over the life course. Because adolescents comprise nearly one-fourth of the entire U.S. population, the nation needs policies and practices that will better leverage these developmental opportunities to harness the promise of adolescenceâ€"rather than focusing myopically on containing its risks. This report examines the neurobiological and socio-behavioral science of adolescent development and outlines how this knowledge can be applied, both to promote adolescent well-being, resilience, and development, and to rectify structural barriers and inequalities in opportunity, enabling all adolescents to flourish.