Cambridge Studies in Social and Emotional Development – serie

How do marriages become unhappy? How do marriages change? What are the theories and methods that can best illuminate our understanding of marital development? This 1998 volume comprehensively explores how marriages develop and deteriorate, and in doing so, brings together leading scholars to present research on the longitudinal course of marriage. The chapters share a common focus on the early phases of marriage but address a diverse array of topics, including marital conflict, personality, social support, the transition to parenthood, violence, ethnicity, stress, alcohol use, commitment and sexuality. Implications of this research for alleviating marital distress are also noted. The book concludes with six provocative analyses by prominent scholars in the areas of sociology, clinical psychology, social psychology and developmental psychology.

To be known, and to know others, is critical to all social relationships. This topic of 'disclosure processes' not only pertains to people's disclosure of daily thoughts and emotions, but to their disclosure of many controversial problems in contemporary society, such as divorce, AIDS and sexual abuse. The bulk of research has focused on disclosure processes in adults and relatively little attention has been given to that phenomena in children and adolescents. The collection of chapters in this book redresses the balance by systematically examining disclosure processes in children and adolescents. This covers the knowledge of how, to whom, and the conditions under which children and adolescents reveal their personal thoughts and emotions.

This volume provides a developmental perspective of the regulation and dysregulation of emotion, in particular, how children learn about feelings and how they learn to deal with both positive and negative feelings. Emotion regulation involves the interaction of physical, behavioural and cognitive processes in response to changes in one's emotional state. The changes can be brought on by factors internal to the individual (e.g. biological) or external (e.g. other people). Featuring contributions from leading researchers in developmental psychopathology, the volume concentrates on theories and data concerning the development of emotion regulation with an emphasis on both intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. Original conceptualizations of the reciprocal influences among the various response systems - neurophysiological-biochemical, behavioral-expressive, and subjective-experiential - are provided, and the individual chapters address both normal and psychopathological forms of emotion regulation, particularly depression and aggression, from infancy through adolescence. This book will appeal to specialists in developmental, clinical and social psychology, psychiatry, education, and others interested in understanding the developmental processes involved in the regulation of emotion over the course of childhood.

This important volume deals with the issue of how to make comparisons in the field of human development. In their comparisons of various social groups, social scientists generally focus on what the differences are, rather than elucidating how and why the groups differ. Comparisons in Human Development examines ways in which different disciplines have treated comparisons and development and provides empirical examples that take a comparative, developmental approach to human activity and thought. Contributors share the view that the study of development must be concerned with processes that operate over time and are regulated by their physical, biological, social and cultural contexts. Development is understood in systemic terms, with multidirectional influences that cross levels of analysis, including the cellular, the individual, the family, and the cultural and historical.

During middle childhood, the period between ages 5 and 12, children gain the basic tools, skills and motivations to become productive members of their society. Failure to acquire these basic tools can lead to long-term consequences for children's future education, work and family life. In this book, first published in 2006, the editors assemble contributions from fifteen longitudinal studies representing diverse groups in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to learn what developmental patterns and experiences in middle childhood contexts forecast the directions children take when they reach adolescence and adulthood. The editors conclude that, although lasting individual differences are evident by the end of the preschool years, a child's developmental path in middle childhood contributes significantly to the adolescent and adult that he or she becomes. Families, peers and the broader social and economic environment all make a difference for young people's future education, work and relationships with others.

Achievement and Motivation was originally published in 1993. It provides a comprehensive review of research conducted on the topic in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Most particularly, it focuses on the research of those in the field who tackle the issue from a social-developmental perspective. The basic theme concerns the relation between motivation (why one does something) and achievement (how one performs on a variety of tasks and activities) in education settings specifically. It successfully engages with educational concerns about student interest in learning and their subsequent performance. It will still be a useful point of reference for any readers involved in the social-developmental study of achievement and motivation in schools, as it comprehensively documents the progression of this topic in the years leading up to its 1993 publication.

Although innumerable songs, poems, plays and movies have been written about adolescent romantic relationships, no scientific book has been written on that topic. Numerous volumes exist on adult romantic relationships and on adolescent sexuality, but this volume, first published in 2000, was the first to examine adolescent romantic relationships. A group of eminent investigators met to discuss the topic and were charged with the task of writing about their conceptualization of these relationships and of romantic experiences in adolescence. The papers cover the full range of aspects of romantic relationships, and examine general processes and individual differences within the general context of adolescent development. Each paper contains numerous provocative ideas that are designed to stimulate research on the topic.

Children are not simply molded by the environment; through constant inference and interpretation, they actively shape their own social world. This book is about that process. Elliot Turiel's work focuses on the development of moral judgement in children and adolescents and, more generally, on their evolving understanding of the conventions of social systems. His research suggests that social judgements are ordered, systematic, subtly discriminative, and related to behavior. His theory of the ways in which children generate social knowledge through their social experiences will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and students in child development and education.

Interest in the childhood evolution of our thinking and knowledge concerning the social world is lively and growing and studies have proliferated for many years. When it was first published in 1981, this book afforded a group of distinguished social scientists the opportunity to reflect on social cognitive development and on the implications their own theoretical positions and research findings might have for this central process. One of its special strengths is the range of the contributors' backgrounds. In addition to specialists, there are students of non-social cognitive development, social anthropology, the 'adult' (non-developmental) social, personality and cognitive psychology. Their readable essays thus offer compelling perspectives and approaches for those interested in the child's construction of social reality.

When this book was first published in 1978, it was only recently that researchers had begun to focus on children's peer relationships and the impact of these relationships on their development. The contributors to this volume view friendship as an important context for the study of a variety of cognitive and affective processes - from the perspectives of a wide range of disciplines. The volume poses an array of fascinating theoretical questions, and offers varied methodological tools for answering them. Some contributors present and review applied research addressed to conceptualizing and ameliorating peer relationship problems, whilst others reflect applied or policy-orientated concerns in chapters on racial integration and the integration of mentally retarded children into regular classrooms. A chapter on the scientific, political and social history of the interest in children's friendships and two summary chapters add to the usefulness of the book for students.

In psychology there has been an explosion of interest in what has come to be called social cognition. How do people categorise and conceptualise social situations, obligations and relationships? And what are the implications of their categorisations and conceptualisations for behaviour? Developmental and social psychologists are currently converging on the developmental roots of social cognitive abilities. This timely 1983 book offers a useful overview of research and theory concerning social cognition and social behaviour in children at the time of this book's publication. A full range of theoretical approaches is represented, key problems are systematically reviewed, and research programmes and perspectives of leading psychologists in the field are summarised.

Achievement and Motivation was originally published in 1993. It provides a comprehensive review of research conducted on the topic in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Most particularly, it focuses on the research of those in the field who tackle the issue from a social-developmental perspective. The basic theme concerns the relation between motivation (why one does something) and achievement (how one performs on a variety of tasks and activities) in education settings specifically. It successfully engages with educational concerns about student interest in learning and their subsequent performance. It will still be a useful point of reference for any readers involved in the social-developmental study of achievement and motivation in schools, as it comprehensively documents the progression of this topic in the years leading up to its 1993 publication.

What kinds of childbearing practices foster the development of helping, sharing, and other prosocial behaviours? What roles do biology and culture play in the development of prosocial behaviour? In this book, Nancy Eisenberg and Paul Mussen review and summarize scholarly research that has been devoted to the development of prosocial behaviour in children, and examine the variety of influences that contribute to children's prosocial development, including the media, parents, peers, biology, culture, personal characteristics, as well as situational determinants. The authors argue that prosocial behaviour can be learned and is modifiable, and they suggest ways that parents, teachers, and other can enhance prosocial development. In addition, the authors attempt to communicate the advances in the study of prosocial development that have taken place over the last decade. The book highlights some questions that have not yet been addressed adequately by researchers, and suggests areas for future work.

This volume provides a developmental perspective of the regulation and dysregulation of emotion, in particular, how children learn about feelings and how they learn to deal with both positive and negative feelings. Emotion regulation involves the interaction of physical, behavioural and cognitive processes in response to changes in one's emotional state. The changes can be brought on by factors internal to the individual (e.g. biological) or external (e.g. other people). Featuring contributions from leading researchers in developmental psychopathology, the volume concentrates on theories and data concerning the development of emotion regulation with an emphasis on both intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. Original conceptualizations of the reciprocal influences among the various response systems - neurophysiological-biochemical, behavioral-expressive, and subjective-experiential - are provided, and the individual chapters address both normal and psychopathological forms of emotion regulation, particularly depression and aggression, from infancy through adolescence. This book will appeal to specialists in developmental, clinical and social psychology, psychiatry, education, and others interested in understanding the developmental processes involved in the regulation of emotion over the course of childhood.

Although conflict in human affairs has fascinated theorists and researchers for centuries, this book, was the first to focus on the role of conflict in psychological and social development: the hows, whens, wheres, and whys of conflict in everyday life. Conflict is not always a negative, destructive event; research shows that it has many positive effects in the development of individuals and their interpersonal relationships. A major theme of Conflict in Child and Adolescent Development is how the management of conflict can enhance the psychological growth of individuals and strengthen relationships among people. Leading scholars present findings based on empirical research from psychology, anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, and family relations to provide an intriguing picture of what is known about conflict and to preview future research.

In this timely collection, biological and behavioral scientists address questions emerging from new research about the origins and interconnections of altruism and aggression within and across species. They explore the genetic underpinnings of affiliative and aggressive orientations as well as the biological correlates of these behaviors. They consider environmental variables - family patterns, child rearing practices - that influence prosocial and antisocial behaviors. And they examine internal processes such as empathy, socio-inferential abilities, and cognitive attributions, that regulate 'kindness' and 'selfishness'. The first section focuses on biological, sociobiological, and ethological approaches. It explores the utility of animal models for understanding both human and infrahuman social behavior. The second section focuses on the development, socialization, and mediation of altruism and aggression in children. Several concerns underly both sections. These include the role of attachment processes, separation distress, reciprocal interchanges, and social play in determining the quantity and quality of aggressive and affiliative interactions; the function of emotions (e.g. empathy, guilt, and anger) as instigators of altruism and aggression; and the nature of sex differences. Several chapters present data on emotions that mediate altruism and aggression and also on patterns of association between prosocial and antisocial behaviors. The authors take an ethological perspective, placing special importance on the need to explore altruism and aggression in the real lives and natural habitats of humans and other animals.

This important book provides a comprehensive look, from a developmental perspective, of how children and adolescents come to understand themselves during the first two decades of life. It explores every aspect of this central area of social cognition, including the physical, social, active, and psychological aspects of self. The authors present data from several cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of children's and adolescents' self-conceptions, and they present alternative methods for interviewing children about themselves and for analyzing children's responses for developmental level and schematic orientation. They offer theoretical explanations about the processes that account for normal development of self-understanding and contrast these with abnormal processes that arise in populations of clinically disturbed youth. A chapter is also devoted to the study of children living in a remote agrarian setting, whose self-understanding is contrasted with the self-conceptions of children in the United States.

How do marriages become unhappy? How do marriages change? What are the theories and methods that can best illuminate our understanding of marital development? This 1998 volume comprehensively explores how marriages develop and deteriorate, and in doing so, brings together leading scholars to present research on the longitudinal course of marriage. The chapters share a common focus on the early phases of marriage but address a diverse array of topics, including marital conflict, personality, social support, the transition to parenthood, violence, ethnicity, stress, alcohol use, commitment and sexuality. Implications of this research for alleviating marital distress are also noted. The book concludes with six provocative analyses by prominent scholars in the areas of sociology, clinical psychology, social psychology and developmental psychology.

Friendship is one of life's most essential and rewarding forms of interaction. It is a feature of every culture and most persons interact with their friends on a daily basis.This book provides a forum in which a group of internationally recognized scholars, active in the study of friendship, presents the major conceptual issues, themes, and findings from their research. The authors describe the theoretical and empirical context, and the goals of their own research programmes. They discuss research and the methodological strategies adopted for studying friendship relations. A variety of topics is explored, including cultural variations in children's and adolescents' friendships, the association between friendship and cognitive and personality development, the effect of friendship on adjustment, and the links between experience within the family and relationships with friends. This book will appeal to developmental psychologists, researchers, and students. It will also provide a solid reference work for social psychologists, sociologists, and social workers concerned with interpersonal relationships.

This collection brings together research on morality in human development. Morality in its various forms is a dominant influence on the conduct and evaluation of day-to-day life. The pervasiveness of the moral domain can be detected in every aspect of social life; moral commitments shape the goals and aspirations of individuals and moral judgments are apparent in discourse about most forms of human interaction. Two broad themes integrate this book: social context relationships and development. Contexts include interpersonal as well as societal communities and cultures. This volume will appeal to scholars from many disciplines including: psychology, anthropology, education, sociology, law, linguistics, and ethics.

Originally published in 1988, this book brings together the research of leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines concerned with the study of the transition to parenthood. The text discusses the reasons why some new parents experience an enhanced sense of self and a deepening of important relationships, whereas others experience crisis and conflict as they try to adapt to the birth of their first baby. Specific chapters analyse individuals' motivation to become parents, changes in marital relations, consequences of prevention programmes, and social support for prospective and new parents. Adaptation to the transition to parenthood is discussed under both normative circumstances and conditions of medical and social risk.

To be known, and to know others, is critical to all social relationships. This topic of 'disclosure processes' not only pertains to people's disclosure of daily thoughts and emotions, but to their disclosure of many controversial problems in contemporary society, such as divorce, AIDS and sexual abuse. The bulk of research has focused on disclosure processes in adults and relatively little attention has been given to that phenomena in children and adolescents. The collection of chapters in this book redresses the balance by systematically examining disclosure processes in children and adolescents. This covers the knowledge of how, to whom, and the conditions under which children and adolescents reveal their personal thoughts and emotions.

How are children's social lives at school related to their motivation to achieve and how do motivational and social processes interact to explain children's adjustment at school? This volume, first published in 1990, features work by leading researchers in educational and developmental psychology and provides perspectives on how and why children tend to thrive or fail at school. The individual chapters examine the unique roles of peers and teachers in communicating and reinforcing school-related attitudes, expectations, and definitions of self. Relations of children's school adjustment to school motivation, interpersonal functioning, and social skillfulness are also explored. The developmental and social perspectives on motivation and achievement presented in this volume provide new insights into the complex processes contributing to school success.

Each generation of American children across the tumultuous twentieth century has come of age in the different world. How do major historical events - such as war or the depression - influence children's development? Children in Time and Place brings together social historians and developmental psychologists to explore the implications of a changing society for children's growth and life chances. transitions provide a central theme, for historical transitions to the social transitions of children and their developmental experiences.

This important volume deals with the issue of how to make comparisons in the field of human development. In their comparisons of various social groups, social scientists generally focus on what the differences are, rather than elucidating how and why the groups differ. Comparisons in Human Development examines ways in which different disciplines have treated comparisons and development and provides empirical examples that take a comparative, developmental approach to human activity and thought. Contributors share the view that the study of development must be concerned with processes that operate over time and are regulated by their physical, biological, social and cultural contexts. Development is understood in systemic terms, with multidirectional influences that cross levels of analysis, including the cellular, the individual, the family, and the cultural and historical.

Although conflict in human affairs has fascinated theorists and researchers for centuries, this book, was the first to focus on the role of conflict in psychological and social development: the hows, whens, wheres, and whys of conflict in everyday life. Conflict is not always a negative, destructive event; research shows that it has many positive effects in the development of individuals and their interpersonal relationships. A major theme of Conflict in Child and Adolescent Development is how the management of conflict can enhance the psychological growth of individuals and strengthen relationships among people. Leading scholars present findings based on empirical research from psychology, anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, and family relations to provide an intriguing picture of what is known about conflict and to preview future research.

Developmental Science provides an account of the basic principles of the new developmental synthesis. A group of eminent scientists from social and biological sciences believes that a fresh, interdisciplinary orientation is required to achieve progress on critical issues of behavioral theory, method, and application. They formed the Carolina Consortium on Human Development in 1987 as an advanced institute for the study of development. This book is the outgrowth of this long term collaboration. In addition to the collaborative statement, individual chapters outline implications of the orientation for method and theory in traditional disciplines. The chapters address specific developmental issues, varying across time frames, methodologies, disciplines, cultures and even species. They provide an inside look at the basic issues that confront modern social and behavioral study of development, including its strengths and problems.

In the last twenty to thirty years, a new way to understand complex systems has emerged in the natural sciences - an approach often called non-linear dynamics, dynamical systems theory, or chaos theory. This perspective has allowed scientists to trace the emergence of order from disorder and complex, higher-order forms from interactions among lower-order constituents. This is called self-organization, and is thought to be responsible for change and continuity in physical, biological, and social systems. Recently, principles of self-organizing dynamic systems have been imported into psychology, especially developmental psychology, where they have helped us reconceptualize basic processes in motor and cognitive development. Emotion, Development, and Self-Organization is the first book to apply these principles to emotional development. The contributors address fundamental issues such as the biological bases of emotion and development, relations between cognition and emotion in real time and development, personality and individual differences, interpersonal processes, and clinical implications.

What is the unique mission of developmental psychology? How has it evolved historically? What are its current challenges? The chapters in this collection present the view that research, history and policy are essential and interlocking components of a mature developmental psychology. Patterns of human development differ markedly across historical epochs, cultures and social circumstances. Major societal changes examined by contributing authors - the advent of universal compulsory schooling, the adoption of a one-child policy in China, US policy shifts in healthcare, welfare and childcare - present 'natural experiments' in social design. Authors challenge the idea of a clear distinction between basic and applied developmental research. In sharp contrast with the view that science is value-neutral, developmental psychologists have from the outset pursued the betterment of children and families through educational, childcare and health initiatives. An historical perspective reveals the beneficial, if sometimes contentious, interplay between empirical research and social programs and policies.