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.

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.

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

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.

Developmental Approaches to Human Evolution encapsulates the current state of evolutionary developmental anthropology. This emerging scientific field applies tools and approaches from modern developmental biology to understand the role of genetic and developmental processes in driving morphological and cognitive evolution in humans, non-human primates and in the laboratory organisms used to model these changes. Featuring contributions from well-established pioneers and emerging leaders, this volume is designed to build research momentum and catalyze future innovation in this burgeoning field. The book’s broad research scope encompasses soft and hard tissues of the head and body, including the skeleton, special senses and the brain. Developmental Approaches to Human Evolution is an invaluable resource on the mechanisms of primate and vertebrate evolution for scholars across a wide array of intersecting disciplines, including primatology, paleoanthropology, vertebrate morphology, evolutionary developmental biology and health sciences.

Working with principles from the fields of evolutionary and developmental biology (evo-devo), this fascinating work offers a new approach to analyzing child growth and development, examining each stage and transition in detail, from fetal development to preadulthood. Based on the author's in-depth review of the current literature and his own observations as a pediatric endocrinologist, the book demonstrates how the transitions between human life history phases represent unique periods of evolutionary adaptive response to the environment. In addition, the author explains why an understanding of these transition periods enables us to better understand the sequence and mechanisms of child growth as well as to better diagnose child growth disorders. Logically organized and clearly written, Evo-Devo of Child Growth: Sets a solid foundation of principles such as evolutionary thinking in medicine and child growth, life history theory, and heterochrony and allometry Examines the relationship between child growth and the theory of life history Applies evo-devo theory to fetal growth, infancy, childhood, juvenility, adolescence, and preadulthood Explores the trade-offs and adaptive phenotypic plasticity during transition periods Explains the role of life history theory in understanding and diagnosing growth disorders such as Down syndrome, Noonan syndrome, and Silver-Russell syndrome In addition to the author's own analysis and observations, this book also features notes from leading clinicians and evolutionary biologists, offering additional perspectives on the relationship between evo-devo and child growth and development. Evo-Devo of Child Growth provides a new perspective for evolutionary biologists to understand the phases and transitions of child growth. Moreover, it offers a new approach to help clinicians to better understand and diagnose a broad range of child growth disorders.