Crosscurrents in Contemporary Psychology Series – serie

This volume derived from original presentations given at a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, under the auspices of the Center for Child Well-Being. Scholars, practitioners, public health professionals, and principals in the child development community convened to address a science-based framework for elements of well-being and how the elements might be developed across the life course.Integrating physical, cognitive, and social-emotional domains, Well-Being is the first scientific book to consider well-being holistically. Focusing on a set of core strengths grouped within these three domains, the book also includes a fourth section on developmental strengths through adulthood that broadly examines a continuum of health and development, as well as transitions in well-being. This volume takes a developmental perspective across the life course, describing foundational strengths for well-being--the capacities that can be actively developed, supported, or learned. These foundational strengths--problem solving, emotional regulation, and physical safety--are the positive underpinnings of early child health and development, as well as ongoing well-being across the life course. Working together and blending their respective disciplinary perspectives and expertise, 53 experts in psychology, sociology, child development, and medicine have contributed to the book.

Interaction in Human Development unites theoretical essays and empirical accounts bearing directly on the nature of interactions as a principal factor and organizing feature in human mental and social development. The papers discuss all areas of interaction including genetic, environmental, life-span, interpersonal, and cultural. Ideal as a text for students and as a reference for professionals in personality, developmental, educational, and environmental psychology, psychotherapy, behavioral medicine, and language.

This volume is concerned with elucidating similarities and differences in enculturation processes that help to account for the ways in which individuals in different cultures develop. Each chapter reviews a substantive parenting topic, describes the relevant cultures (in psychological ethnography, rather than from an anthropological stance), reports on the parenting-in-culture results, and discusses the significance of cross-cultural investigation for understanding the parenting issue of interest. Specific areas of study include environment and interactive style, responsiveness, activity patterns, distributions of social involvement with children, structural patterns of interaction, and development of the social self. Through exposure to a wide range of diverse research methods, readers will gain a deeper appreciation of the problems, procedures, possibilities, and profits associated with a truly comparative approach to understanding human growth and development.

Being sick is a normal part of childhood, and being seriously ill is the unfortunate lot of many children. Every child in the United States has some contact with the healthcare system at some time, and it is estimated that one of every two children or adolescents is hospitalized as a result of illness or injury. Being injured, undergoing routine medical procedures, getting sick, or being hospitalized confront children with challenges on many levels--physical, mental, emotional, and social. The premise of this volume is that developmental and psychological factors are central elements in many current problems in child health such as persistent crying in infants, sources of children's injury and respiratory illness, children's coping with medical procedures, childhood trauma, and physical and mental well-being in adolescence. Understanding, promoting, and maintaining children's health, therefore, depend to a great extent--and are likely to depend even more in the future--on elucidating the determinants and consequences of children's and parents' health-related behaviors and attitudes. Chapter contributors include physicians and psychologists who apply principles of developmental and social psychology to their research on specific problems in children's health. Their offerings delineate current areas of collaboration between developmental psychology and behavioral pediatrics. These perspectives should prompt researchers and practitioners to explore additional ways in which more extensive endeavors at the interface of these two disciplines will facilitate efforts to understand children's health behaviors and foster children's well-being. Attention to this work should lead to more direct clinical applicability and translation for preventive policy strategies as well as therapeutic interventions.

First published in 1980. Psychology is today increasingly diversified, sophisticated, pluralistic, and specialized, and psychologists venture beyond the confines of their narrow subdiscipline only rarely. Yet psychologists with different specialties encounter similar problems, ask similar questions, and share similar concerns. Unfortunately, there are far too few forums for the expression or exploration of what is common in psychology. The series, Crosscurrents in Contemporary Psychology, is intended to serve as such a forum. The purpose of this volume, Comparative Methods in Psychology is to make available to the psychological community thoughtful essays that examine the history, philosophy, theory, methodology, and experimentation representative of major comparative methods. The chapters in this collection are intended to introduce students of psychology to specialized modes of comparison from the perspectives of prominent contributors and to promote mutual discussion among comparativists of issues and concerns common to all types of comparison.

First published in 1987. Contemporary psychology is increasingly diversified, pluralistic, and specialized, and most psychologists venture beyond the confines of their substantive specialty only rarely. Yet psychologists with different specialties encounter similar problems, ask similar questions, and share similar concerns. Unfortunately, there are very few arenas available for the expression or exploration of what is common across psychological subdisciplines. The Crosscurrents in Contemporary Psychology series is intended to serve as such a forum. The chief aim of this series is to provide integrated perspectives on supradisciplinary themes in psychology. Despite its contemporary diversity and high degree of specialization, psychology embraces many phenomena that are of interest across subdisciplines largely because of the generality and ubiquity of those phenomena. The sensitive period is one. Sensitivity to different kinds of experience varies over the life cycle of an organism.

This volume is concerned with elucidating similarities and differences in enculturation processes that help to account for the ways in which individuals in different cultures develop. Each chapter reviews a substantive parenting topic, describes the relevant cultures (in psychological ethnography, rather than from an anthropological stance), reports on the parenting-in-culture results, and discusses the significance of cross-cultural investigation for understanding the parenting issue of interest. Specific areas of study include environment and interactive style, responsiveness, activity patterns, distributions of social involvement with children, structural patterns of interaction, and development of the social self. Through exposure to a wide range of diverse research methods, readers will gain a deeper appreciation of the problems, procedures, possibilities, and profits associated with a truly comparative approach to understanding human growth and development.

Being sick is a normal part of childhood, and being seriously ill is the unfortunate lot of many children. Every child in the United States has some contact with the healthcare system at some time, and it is estimated that one of every two children or adolescents is hospitalized as a result of illness or injury. Being injured, undergoing routine medical procedures, getting sick, or being hospitalized confront children with challenges on many levels--physical, mental, emotional, and social. The premise of this volume is that developmental and psychological factors are central elements in many current problems in child health such as persistent crying in infants, sources of children's injury and respiratory illness, children's coping with medical procedures, childhood trauma, and physical and mental well-being in adolescence. Understanding, promoting, and maintaining children's health, therefore, depend to a great extent--and are likely to depend even more in the future--on elucidating the determinants and consequences of children's and parents' health-related behaviors and attitudes. Chapter contributors include physicians and psychologists who apply principles of developmental and social psychology to their research on specific problems in children's health. Their offerings delineate current areas of collaboration between developmental psychology and behavioral pediatrics. These perspectives should prompt researchers and practitioners to explore additional ways in which more extensive endeavors at the interface of these two disciplines will facilitate efforts to understand children's health behaviors and foster children's well-being. Attention to this work should lead to more direct clinical applicability and translation for preventive policy strategies as well as therapeutic interventions.

Interaction in Human Development unites theoretical essays and empirical accounts bearing directly on the nature of interactions as a principal factor and organizing feature in human mental and social development. The papers discuss all areas of interaction including genetic, environmental, life-span, interpersonal, and cultural. Ideal as a text for students and as a reference for professionals in personality, developmental, educational, and environmental psychology, psychotherapy, behavioral medicine, and language.