BiblioVault - Books about Developmental

Making Grateful Kids

The Science of Building Character

Jeffrey Froh

Templeton Press, 2014

If there was a new wonder drug on the market that got kids to behave better, improve their grades, feel happier, and avoid risky behaviors, many parents around the world would be willing to empty their bank accounts to acquire it. Amazingly, such a product actually does exist. It’s not regulated by the FDA, it has no ill side-effects, and it’s absolutely free and available to anyone at any time. This miracle cure is gratitude.

Over the past decade, science has shown that gratitude is one of the most valuable and important emotions we possess, and it is a virtue that anyone can cultivate. In fact, researchers have developed many different methods people can use to foster an attitude of gratitude, and the science shows that many of them really work.

In Making Grateful Kids, two of the leading authorities on gratitude among young people, Jeffrey J. Froh and Giacomo Bono, introduce their latest and most compelling research, announce groundbreaking findings, and share real-life stories from adults and youth to show parents, teachers, mentors, and kids themselves how to achieve greater life satisfaction through gratitude. Most importantly perhaps, they expand on this groundbreaking research to offer practical and effective common-sense plans that can be used in day-to-day interactions between kids and adults to enhance success and wellbeing.

Their unique, scientifically-based approach for producing grateful youth works whether these kids are very young elementary school students or troubled teenagers. Not only does the purposeful practice of gratitude increase their happiness, but the research indicates that grateful kids also report more self-discipline, fulfilling relationships, and engagement with their schools and communities when compared to their less grateful counterparts. After reading Making Grateful Kids, parents, teachers, and anyone who works with youth will be able to connect more meaningfully with kids so that all parties can focus on the things that matter most and, in turn, create a more cooperative and thriving society.

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Matters of Significance

Replication, Translation and Academic Freedom in developmental science

Marinus H. van IJzendoorn and Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg

University College London, 2024

A thorough examination of field-shaping research on attachment that serves as a valuable resource for understanding child developmental science and ethically applying its insights in practice.

Application of scientific findings to effective practice and informed policymaking is an aspiration for much research in the biomedical, behavioral, and developmental sciences. But too often translations of science to practice are conceptually narrow and developed quickly as salves to an urgent problem. For developmental science, widely implemented parenting interventions are prime examples of technical translations from knowledge about the causes of children’s mental distress. Aiming to support family relationships and facilitate adaptive child development, these programs are rushed through when the scientific findings on which they are based remain contested and without enough evidence of success from randomized controlled trials.

In Matters of Significance, the authors draw on forty years of experience with theoretical, empirical, meta-analytic, and translational work in child development research to highlight the complex relations between replication, translation, and academic freedom. They argue that challenging fake facts promulgated by under-replicated and underpowered studies is also a method of translation. Such a challenge can, in the highlighted field of attachment and emotion regulation research, bust popular myths about the decisive role of genes, hormones, or the brain on parenting and child development, with a balancing impact on practice and policy making. The authors argue that academic freedom from interference by pressure groups, stakeholders, funders, or university administrators in the core stages of research is a necessary but besieged condition for adversarial research and myth-busting.

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The Mental Growth of Children From Two to Fourteen Years

A Study of the Predictive Value of the Minnesota Preschool Scales

Florence Goodenough

University of Minnesota Press, 1942

The Mental Growth of Children from Two to Fourteen Years was first published in 1942. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.This discussion of the development and application of the Minnesota Preschool Scales includes detailed accounts of the statistical analyses used, follow-up studies, and a number of case histories, as well as a review of previous work in the testing of infants and young children. Covers a 12-year period during which trained examiners tested the same children at stated intervals. 1,350 tests were used in the standardization of verbal and nonverbal forms. Test standing on the Minnesota scales showed correlation with standing on tests given at the completion of high school.

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Mental Retardation

Robert B. Edgerton

Harvard University Press, 1979

The economic cost of retardation measures in the billions each year and the human cost is incalculable. However, many forms of retardation can now be prevented medically and much is now known about how to help the retarded lead more normal and satisfactory lives. In Mental Retardation, Dr. Robert Edgerton provides an extraordinarily useful and humane guide to this new knowledge in the brief and readable format that has become a trademark of the Developing Child series.

The book begins with a clear review of what is known about the causes of retardation, ranging from genetic abnormalities to prenatal infection, malnutrition in early childhood, environmental toxins (such as lead paint), and poverty. Edgerton shows how many of these problems can be avoided by genetic counseling, improved prenatal care, and the elimination of environmental hazards. But he also goes on to consider the questions that inevitably arise when prevention fails and family and society must cope with a retarded child: What is the impact of the child on the family? Is care within the family preferable to institutionalization? How can schools best educate the retarded? Is "mainstreaming" sensible? And how far can the retarded adult go towards normal patterns of work and social life within the community?

Mental Retardation makes it clear that many of the problems of retardation are caused by the misunderstanding and intolerance of a society like our own, which places extraordinary emphasis on mental ability and its measurable manifestations: school achievement and IQ. It is just this sort of intolerance and misunderstanding that this book does so much to dispel.

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Mind and Media

The Effects of Television, Video Games, and Computers

Patricia Marks Greenfield

Harvard University Press, 1984

Video games, television, and computers are facts of life for today's children. Anxious parents and teachers, concerned with maintaining the intellectual and social richness of childhood, need to understand their effects. Are we producing a generation of passive children who can't read, who require constant visual and aural stimulation, and who prefer the company of technical instruments to friends and family?

Greenfield believes that to answer this question we should not cling to old and elitist assumptions about the value of literacy. Instead she urges that we explore the results of the new research to discover how the various media can be used to promote social growth and thinking skills. She finds that each medium can make a contribution to development, that each has strengths and weaknesses, and that the ideal childhood environment includes a multimedia approach to learning.

Current studies show us, for example, that television may indeed hinder reading ability under some circumstances. Yet it may also be used to enhance and motivate reading. Television can foster visual literacy, teaching children how to interpret close-ups, zooms, and cutting, and beyond this, how to pick up visual details, orient oneself in space, and anticipate formats and patterns of behavior. Video games teach spatial skills and inductive thinking, and classroom computers, contrary to the popular stereotype, encourage cooperative enterprise.

Timely and optimistic, Mind and Media is filled with unexpected conclusions and practical suggestions for helping our children to thrive in a technological world.

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Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology

Volume 1

John Hill

University of Minnesota Press, 1968

Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Volume 1 was first published in 1968.This volume introduces a series which will make available in book form the papers given at the annual symposia on child psychology sponsored by the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. Each volume will present the papers from one symposium. For each symposium a number of outstanding child psychologists are invited to present papers dealing with their own programs of research. Each participant is given the opportunity of summarizing and integrating the findings of several studies and discussing the conceptual framework or rationale for the series of studies.This volume, based on the program of the 1966 symposium, includes six papers by nine contributors: Jacob L. Gewirtz, Robert D. Hess, Virginia C. Shipman, E. Mavis Hetherington, O. Ivar Lovaas, Patrick Suppes, Lester Hyman, Max Jerman, and Burton L. White. The papers reflect current research trends in both child psychology and psychology in general, including discussions of the socialization of the child in the culture of poverty (Hess and Shipman); extensions in behavior theory based on the study of children (Gewirtz); the application of behavior theory to clinical intervention (Lovaas); the role of imitation in human learning (Lovaas, Hetherington); the use of computers in instruction and basic research (Suppes, et al.); environmental influences on cognitive processes (White, Hess and Shipman, Suppes, et al.); infant development (White); parental influences in socialization (Hetherington, Hess); and the clarification of stimulus functions (Gewirtz, Lovaas, White).

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Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology

Volume 2

John Hill

University of Minnesota Press, 1969

Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Volume 2 was first published in 1969.This is the second volume in the series which is based on papers from the annual Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, sponsored by the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. Volume 2 presents material from five papers given at the 1967 symposium. For each symposium a number of outstanding child psychologists are invited to give papers dealing with their own programs of research. Each participant is provided with the opportunity of summarizing and integrating the findings of several studies and discussing the conceptual framework or rationale for the series of studies.This volume includes five papers ten contributors: “Stable Patterns of Behavior: The Significance of Enduring Orientations for Personality Development” by Wanda C. Bronson; “The Child’s Grammar from I to III” by Roger Brown, Courtney Cazden, and Ursula Bellugi-Klima; “A New APPROACH to Behavioral Ecology” by Bettye M. Caldwell; “Effects of Cognition on Perception: A Problem and a Paradigm for Developmental Study” by Maurice Hershenson; and “Cross-Cultural Longitudinal Research on Child Development: Studies of American and Mexican Schoolchildren” by Wayne H. Holtzman, Rogelio Diaz-Guerrero, Jon D. Swartz, and Luis Lara Tapia.

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Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology

Volume 3

John Hill

University of Minnesota Press, 1969

Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Volume 3 was first published in 1969.This is the third volume in the series which is based on papers from the annual Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, sponsored by the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. The material in this volume is based on six papers presented at the 1968 symposium. For each symposium a number of outstanding child psychologists are invited to give papers dealing with their respective programs of research.The contents of this volume are: “Effects of Stimulus Familiarization on Child Behavior” by Gordon N. Cantor, University of Iowa; “Animal Studies of Early Experience: Some Principles Which Have Implication for Human Development” by Victor H. Denenberg, University of Connecticut; “Early Stimulation and Cognitive Development” by Wendell E. Jeffrey, University of California, Los Angeles; “The Development of Stimulus Selection” by Eleanor E. Maccoby, Stanford University; “Adolescent Attitudes and Behavior in Their Reference Groups within Differing Sociocultural Settings” by Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn W. Sherif, both of Pennsylvania State University; “Modeling and Reactive Components of Sibling Interaction” by Brian Sutton-Smith, Teachers College, Columbia University, and B.G. Rosenberg, Bowling Green State University. John P. Hill, the editor, comments on each of the papers in a preface.

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Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology

Volume 4

John Hill

University of Minnesota Press, 1970

Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Volume 4 was first published in 1970.This is the fourth volume in a series which is based on papers from the annual Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, sponsored by the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. The basis for this book is the material from the 1969 symposium. For each symposium a number of outstanding child psychologists are invited to give papers dealing with their respective programs of research.This volume contains six papers by eight contributors: “The Effects of Early Life Experiences on Developmental Processes and Susceptibility to Disease in Animals” by Robert Ader, University of Rochester Medical Center; “The Antecedents and Adult Correlates of Academic and Intellectual Achievement Effort” by Virginia C. Crandall and Esther S. Battle, Fels Research Institute; “The Role of Peer-Group Experience in Moral Development” by Edward C. Devereux, Jr., Cornell University; “The Development of Motor Skills and Social Relationships among Primates through Play” by Phyllis Jay Dolhinow and Naomi Bishop, University of California, Berkeley; “Systems of Perceptual and Perceptual-Motor Development” by Herbert L. Pick, Jr., University of Minnesota; and “Mental Elaboration and Proficient Learning” by William D. Rohwer, Jr., University of California, Berkeley.

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Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology

Volume 5

John Hill

University of Minnesota Press, 1971

Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Volume 5 was first published in 1971.This volume, like the previous volumes in this series, is based on the papers given at an annual Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology sponsored by the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. The content of this book is based on the papers of the 1970 symposium. For each symposium a number of outstanding child psychologists are invited to present papers dealing with their respective programs of research.Six papers by ten contributors are published here: “The Role of Modalities in Perceptual Cognitive Development” by Jacqueline J. Goodnow, George Washington University; “Hypnosis and Childlikeness” by Ernest R. Hilgard, Stanford University; “Explorations into Patterns of Mental Development and Prediction from the Bayley Scales of Infant Development” by Jane V. Hunt and Nancy Bayley, both of the University of California, Berkeley; “A Dyadic Analysis of ‘Aggressive’ Behaviors” by Gerald R. Patterson and J. A. Cobb, both of the Oregon Research Institute; “Development of Hierarchical, Configurational Conceptual Models for Parent Behavior and Child Behavior” by Earl S. Schaefer, National Institute of Mental Health; and “Some Aspects of the Development of Space Perception” by Seymour Wapner, Leonard Cirillo, and A. Harvey Baker, all of Clark University.

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Mothering

Rudolph Schaffer

Harvard University Press

Anyone interested in the drama of development or the excitement of the mother-infant relationship will want to own this book. Since Schaffer sees the child not as a psychologically passive “blob” waiting to be molded, he examines the child’s own internative patterns and targets difficulties between the child-mother relationship.

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Mothers and Others

The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

Harvard University Press, 2009

“A brilliant work on a profoundly important subject. The leading scientific authority on motherhood has come through again.” —E. O. Wilson

“Thought provoking…An engaging and compelling argument [that] requires us to rethink entrenched views about how we came to be human.” —Science

Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to rear their young differently than their Great Ape ancestors. From this new form of care came new ways of engaging and understanding each other. How such singular human capacities evolved, and how they have kept us alive for thousands of generations, is the mystery revealed in this bold and wide-ranging new vision of human emotional evolution.

Mothers and Others finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. If the young were to survive in a world of scarce food, they needed to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, aunts, fathers, friends—and, with any luck, grandmothers. Out of this complicated and contingent form of childrearing, Sarah Hrdy argues, came the human capacity for understanding others. Mothers and others teach us who will care, and who will not.

From its opening vision of “apes on a plane”; to descriptions of baby care among marmosets, chimpanzees, wolves, and lions; to explanations about why men in hunter-gatherer societies hunt together, Mothers and Others is compellingly readable. But it is also an intricately knit argument that ever since the Pleistocene, it has taken a village to raise children—and how that gave our ancient ancestors the first push on the path toward becoming emotionally modern human beings.

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