Developmental Psychology: Achievements and Prospects. Edited by M. Bennett. Psychology Press, Hove, 1999. pp. 338. 39.95 (hb)

Arriving at the turn of the century as it does, this collection of essays represents a timely effort by the editor to gather together the thoughts of many distinguished developmental psychologists on the most significant achievements in their specialist areas and on directions for further research in those areas. As such, this text will be of great interest and value to developmentalists as well as to students, practitioners, and researchers in other disciplines. The coverage of this text is wide ranging, and reflects the interdisciplinary relevance of research in developmental psychology. There are chapters on topics ranging from infancy and social interaction to cognitive development, from behavioural genetics and neuroscience to psychopathology. Treatment of the often marginalised cross-cultural and lifespan issues is limited here, but many of the chapters do at least make some stimulating references to these topics. If one is seeking an introduction to major subject areas, paradigms, and concerns in developmental psychology, this book must be viewed as an informative and captivating choice. Mark Bennett, the editor of the volume, provides a helpful overview of the central themes that emerge from the chapters. It is evident from the remainder of the text that developmental psychologists have addressed these themes in different ways over the last century. I would like to suggest that the most significant advance in our theorising has been a growing acknowledgement that human development is vastly complex. Many of the chapters in the book include historical narratives that demonstrate how developmental psychologists have increasingly recognised that development is characterised by multiple interplays among a myriad of native and environmental forces. Moreover, I am happy to note that contemporary thought on these complexities still maintains parsimony of explanation. This book thus gives the reader great hope for the future of developmental psychology. Space does not permit me to give each contribution the attention it deserves here, but I would like to justify my optimism with reference to some of the contributors’ discussions of fundamental issues in their research areas. First, chapters by Bornstein on infancy and Plomin on behavioural genetics suggest that we have gradually shifted from a simplistic view of the nature vs. nurture dichotomy to a transactional approach that emphasises how native characteristics both drive and respond to environmental forces. Similarly, Schaffer’s discussion of socialisation research shows how psychologists have moved on from initial efforts to specify a one-way road from socialising agent to child. As we see in the chapters by Harris, Dunn, and Hartup, the focus now is on understanding the intricate bidirectionality of social relationships. Importantly, researchers have begun to see that theoretical models of development must characterise social relationships as ecological systems which involve more than the sum of the individual effects of the actors involved. This premise is underscored by Nelson, in her discussion of language, when she states, ‘‘There is no either}or here, no nature}nurture choice ; both are not only necessary but indivisible ’’. Also indicating this greater attention to the complexities of development, several of the contributors demonstrate how formulations of domain-general unitary constructs have come to be complemented or even in some cases replaced by notions of multi-dimensionality and domain-specificity. As Keil points out, we have recognised that ‘‘our routes to mature knowledge and thought might be quite different in character depending on the kind of knowledge involved’’. Sternberg’s chapter on intelligence rejects traditional concepts of a general intelligence, focusing instead on a multi-dimensional approach emphasising relatively independent aspects. With these kinds of perspectives, our representations of the causal pathways followed in the course of development must also undergo change. To take one example, Bennett notes how this ‘‘ [g]rowing recognition of the complexity of development is evident . in formal models of nonlinearity in development’’. In summary, the contributions in this volume are both informative and interesting, with insightful and often controversial commentary on how far research has come so far and on where it should go now. But what might be most important—both for researchers in this area and for other readers—is the abundance of new and as yet unanswered questions raised in this text. This perhaps represents the most positive sign of growth in developmental psychology as a discipline.