This text is the first to provide a coherent theoretical treatment of the flourishing new field of developmental psychobiology which has arisen in recent years on the crest of exciting advances in evolutionary biology, developmental neuroscience, and dynamic systems theory. Michel and Moore, two of the field's key pioneers and researchers, integrate primary source information from research in both biological and psychological disciplines in a clear account of the frontier of biopsychological investigation and theorizing. Explicitly conceptual and historical, the first three chapters set the stage for a clear understanding of the field and its research, with particular attention to the nature-nurture question. The next three chapters each provide information about a basic subfield in biology (genetics, evolution, embryology) that is particularly relevant for developmental studies of behavior. These are followed by extended treatments of three spheres of inquiry (behavioral embryology, cognitive neuroscience, animal behavior) in terms of how a successful interdisciplinary approach to behavioral development might look. A final chapter comments on some of the unique aspects of development study. From this detailed and clearly organized text, students will achieve a firm grasp of some of science's most fertile questions about the relation between evolution and development, the relation between brain and cognitive development, the value of a natural history approach to animal behavior--and what it teaches us about humans--and much more. Each chapter contains material that questions the conventional wisdom held in many subdisciplines of biology and psychology. Throughout, the text challenges students to think creatively as it thoroughly grounds them in the field's approach to such topics as behavioral-genetic analysis, the concept of innateness, molecular genetics and development, neuroembryology, behavioral embryology, maturation, cognition, and ethology. A Bradford Book

Fundamentals of Development: The Psychology of Childhood outlines the main areas of developmental psychology, following a thematic approach and offering a broad overview of contemporary interest in the subject. Straightforward language and ample illustrations introduce the reader to the key areas in child development. The material is carefully organized to be as student-friendly as possible. Each chapter addresses a topic, such as perception, verbal communication, and theory of mind. Therefore, chapters are self-contained and comprehensive in their coverage of each aspect of development. This replacement for the highly successful Psychology of Childhood has been thoroughly revised with additional material based on articles appearing in the best academic journals, and covers the major studies which have stood the test of time. The book makes an excellent companion for courses introducing developmental psychology, and serves as an accessible yet comprehensive introduction for students and professionals who may have no background knowledge of the subject. This textbook is accompanied by a CD-ROM of instructor resources which is free of charge to university departments that adopt this book as their text. It includes chapter-by-chapter lecture slides, an interactive chapter-by-chapter multiple-choice question test bank, and multiple-choice questions in paper and pen format.

The multidisciplinary field of developmental psychobiology has uncovered new findings in behavioral progressions that have led to exciting avenues for therapeutic intervention. Developmental Psychobiology examines typical and atypical behavioral and neural development, reflecting a broad sampling of this multidisciplinary field in its five densely informative chapters. Here, ten contributors discuss early attachment, face processing, reading disability, Tourette's syndrome, and schizophrenia as a disorder of neurodevelopment -- emphasizing three fundamental topics that are especially relevant to biological and child psychiatry: Learning and development and the methods for studying them -- Understanding normal progressions as a dynamic behavioral and neural process will have a significant impact in determining the biological substrates of clinical disorders and how we can target effective treatments and interventions for behaviors such as the waxing and waning of symptoms in Tourette's syndrome and OCD, eye contact and gaze in autism, word reading in dyslexia, and working memory in schizophrenia. The establishment of typical and atypical developmental progressions in systems -- Both plasticity and stability are critical in the normal development of behavioral and neural systems. For example, certain behaviors are appropriate at one age but inappropriate at other ages, whereas some clinical disorders may not diminish or change with age and may be viewed instead as developmental delays or deficiencies. The impact of methodological advances on imaging and genetics in understanding typical and atypical behavioral and neural development -- How have developments in noninvasive tools for looking into the developing, behaving human brain -- imaging, computational modeling and genetic techniques -- helped us to inform or constrain our understanding of typical and atypical development? Until now, biological psychiatry has been based on psychopharmacological work, but now, with imaging and genetic techniques, we can further characterize the biological mechanisms underlying a disorder. With chapters that elucidate the newest research in the field, Developmental Psychobiology provides clinicians an abundance of insight that can provide practical help to patients and a richer understanding of the underpinnings of cognitive and emotional disorders.

The previous volume in this series (Blass, 1986) focused on the interface between developmental psychobiology and developmental neurobiology. The volume emphasized that an understanding of central nervous system development and function can be obtained only with reference to the behaviors that it manages, and it emphasized how those behaviors, in tum, shape central development. The present volume explores another natural interface of developmental psy chobiology; behavioral ecology. It documents the progress made by developmental psychobiologists since the mid-1970s in identifying capacities of learning and con ditioning in birds and mammals during the very moments following birth-indeed, during the antenatal period. These breakthroughs in a field that had previously lain dormant reflect the need to "meet the infant where it is" in order for behavior to emerge. Accordingly, studies have been conducted at nest temperature; infants have been rewarded by opportunities to huddle, suckle, or obtain milk, behaviors that are normally engaged in the nest. In addition, there was rejection of the exces sive deprivation, extreme handling, and traumatic manipulation studies of the 1950s and 1960s that yielded information on how animals could respond to trauma but did not reveal mechanisms of normal development. In their place has arisen a series of analyses of how naturally occurring stimuli and situations gain control over behavior and how specifiable experiences impose limitations on subsequent development. Constraints were identified on the range of interactions that remained available to developing animals as a result of particular events.

This book is the outgrowth of a memorial conference to honour the scientific contributions of Robert B. Cairns, an internationally recognised interdisciplinary developmental scientist. It is organised around research themes that were an integral part of Dr Cairns' theories and research: neural and developmental plasticity; brain-behaviour bidirectionality; gene-environment interactions. Throughout this book, these themes are linked together by employing animal models and clinical investigations through multiple levels of analysis approach to understanding the origins, development, desistance and prevention of aggression. These studies will add to the compendium of basic knowledge on the developmental psychobiology of aggression and will aid in the ultimate translation of this knowledge to clinical and community settings. This book hopes to foster the legacy of Robert B. Cairns to facilitate the theoretical development and research of a new generation of developmental scientists dedicated to relieving the tragic consequences of aggression on the individual and society.

ELLIOTT M. BLASS Fifteen years have passed since the first volume on developmental psychobiology (Blass, 1986) appeared in this series and 13 since the publication of the second volume (Blass, 1988). These volumes documented the status of the broad domain of scientific inquiry called developmental psychobiology and were also written with an eye to the future. The future has been revolutionary in at least three ways. First, there was the demise of a descriptive ethology as we had known it, to be replaced first by sociobiology and later by its more sophisticated versions based on quantitative predictions of social interactions that reflected relatedness and inclu sive fitness. Second, there was the emergence of cognitive science, including cogni tive development, as an enormously strong and interactive multidisciplinary effort. Making the "functional" brain more accessible made this revolution all the more relevant to our discipline. In the laboratory, immunocytochemical detection of immediate / early genes, such as los, now allows us to trace neuronal circuits activated during complex behaviors. The "functional" brain of primates, especially humans, was also made very accessible through neuroimaging with which we can look at and into brains as they solve and attempt to solve particular tasks. Those of us who were trained in neurology as graduate students two or three decades ago recognize only the people in white coats and patients in beds or on gurneys when we visit neurologi cal units today. The rest is essentially new.