bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Description of a new species of Paracrobeles Heyns, 1968 (Nematoda, Rhabditida, Cephalobidae) from Kelso Dunes, Mojave National Preserve, California, USA
Authors: Boström Sven , Holovachov Oleksandr
Published: March 2015

A new species of Paracrobeles, P. kelsodunensis sp. nov. is described from the Kelso Dunes area, Mojave National Preserve, southern California. Paracrobeles kelsodunensis sp. nov. is particularly characterised by a body length of 469–626 μm in females and 463–569 μm in males; lateral field with four incisures, extending almost to tail terminus; three pairs of asymmetrical lips, separated by U-shaped primary axils with two long guarding processes, each lip usually with four tines along its margin; three long labial probolae, deeply bifurcated, with slender prongs without tines; metastegostom with a strong anteriorly directed dorsal tooth; pharyngeal corpus anteriorly spindle-shaped, posteriorly elongate bulbous with dilated lumen; spermatheca 24–87 μm long; postvulval uterine sac 60–133 μm long; vulva in a sunken area; spicules 33–38 μm long; and male tail with a 5–8 μm long mucro. The generic diagnosis is emended on the basis of recently described species and a key to the species of Paracrobeles is provided.
League of Arab States
Authors: Pinfari Marco
Published: March 2015

The “League of the Arab States,” commonly known as the “Arab League,” is a regional organization that currently includes 22 countries in the Middle East and Africa. Founded in 1945, it is the oldest among the major regional organizations and its main mission is to promote cooperation between Arab countries and offer a forum for managing disputes that involve member states. Even if it is still an important actor in the regional politics of the Middle East and North Africa, it is often considered among the weakest and least effective regional organizations worldwide, and its role as the leading multilateral organization in the Middle East is increasingly challenged by sub‐regional bodies such as the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Ethology and Human Development
Authors: Bateson Patrick
Published: March 2015

Ethologists have focused on behavior that is characteristic of the species and adapted to its biological requirements. They have attempted to integrate the four separate problems identified by Tinbergen, namely those to do with current processes, current utility, evolution and development. Studies of development have brought ethologists together with those working in many other fields of biology, psychology, psychiatry, and epigenetics. In doing so, issues such as unitary innateness, nature versus nurture, and heritability have proved to be misleading. Attention is now focused on how an individual develops and the interplay between the processes generating the robust features of an individual's behavior and the many processes involved in plasticity. Individuals make choices and control their environment. Their adaptability is crucial. All these activities have an impact on the evolution of their descendants.
The Development of Agency
Authors: Sokol Bryan W. , Hammond Stuart I. , Kuebli Janet , Sweetman Leah
Published: March 2015

Agency is a relational developmental construct. The most basic form of agency is already present in the dynamic, self‐organizing activities of living systems. We discuss how, from the earliest point in the development of persons, agency manifests in different forms and grows through the interrelations of various bio‐psycho‐social processes. These processes can be organized into general levels, including the levels of biophysical agency, psychosocial agency, and sociocultural agency. We further describe how the most flexible and richest forms of agency seen in adulthood build from developmental processes evidenced throughout the life span: infants’ sensorimotor and perceptual functioning, toddlers’ symbolic representational and linguistic functioning, the child's self‐regulatory functioning, and adolescents’ and young adults’ moral functioning. Altogether these functions provide persons with the ability to create the conditions for their own agency, particularly through their participation in community life. This chapter ends with a discussion of the role that civic institutions, especially higher education, must play in expanding human agency.
Dialectical Models of Socialization
Authors: Kuczynski Leon , Mol Jan De
Published: March 2015

Despite contemporary acceptance that children are active agents in their own socialization, that causality between parents and children is bidirectional, and that context matters, basic concepts used in socialization research continue to reflect an underlying mechanistic ontology. In this chapter we propose that a dialectical relational systems conception of the transaction model provides direction for future advances in the study of dynamic parent‐child socialization processes with an emphasis of intergenerational change, not only continuity. The chapter begins by exploring dialectics as a framework underlying an organismic‐contextual meta‐theory for understanding the transactional model of human development. The chapter then outlines social relational theory as a framework for translating four assumptions of a dialectical ontology including agency, holism, contradiction, and synthesis to reformulate major transactional processes in parent‐child relations and socialization. The chapter ends by considering implications for application and methodology informed by dialectics.
Human Development and Culture
Authors: Mistry Jayanthi , Dutta Ranjana
Published: March 2015

This chapter discusses advances in both concepts and methods directed toward the integration of culture and human development. In extending prior syntheses of emergent convergences across varying disciplinary perspectives that emphasize culture and human development, we bring to the fore parallels between sociohistoric‐cultural perspectives and relational development science perspectives. We begin with a brief summary of how three subfields of psychology (i.e., cultural, cross‐cultural, and developmental) began to converge in significant ways over the past three decades in order to provide a context within which the current conceptual, theoretical, and methodological advances toward the integration of culture and human development can be understood. This is followed by the main focus of the chapter–a discussion of both conceptual issues and methodological advances that have been made in the integration of culture and human development. In particular, we call attention to four key advances: (1) the relation of person and culture as embodied or mutually constitutive, (2) the integration of meaning‐making as part of context, (3) action and epigenesis as the source and process of developmental change, and (4) the simultaneous focus on both idiographic and nomothetic levels of analysis. Finally, to highlight the significant progress that has been made in application of these advances in theory and methods, we provide brief overviews of two specific topics of research in the field of human development where the integration of cultural and developmental science perspectives appears to be most promising. These two topics are the emerging field of cultural neuroscience, and integrative research on socialization and ethnic identity development.
Moral Development
Authors: Turiel Elliot
Published: March 2015

This chapter addresses theory and research on the development of morality from early childhood through adolescence. A structural‐developmental‐relational approach is presented proposing that children construct configurations of thinking about welfare, justice, and rights connected with emotions like affection, sympathy, and empathy. Along with the construction of moral judgments, children form systems of judgments in the domain of social convention, involving uniformities within social systems, and the personal domain, involving understandings of legitimate arenas of choice, freedoms, and autonomy. In this social domain approach, moral, conventional, and personal judgments are distinct from each other and constitute separate developmental pathways. The structural‐relational domain approach is compared with other approaches to moral development and associated general psychological assumptions. A critique is offered of past and contemporary views that assume that people's decisions are most frequently nonrational or even irrational and that morality is not based on substantive concepts like welfare and justice.

The critique of those approaches is followed by discussion of the relation of morality and culture, taking into account societal contexts and cultural practices in explaining development. Research is presented indicating that cultures need to be characterized as heterogeneous, and that individuals both partake in culture practices and engage in opposition to and resistance of practices entailing inequalities and domination of one group (such as males) over another (such as females). It is proposed that morality is not relative to cultural contexts, but that commonalities across cultures do not reflect absolutism in moral decision making.

After considering the research on social domains, processes of decision making are discussed. Social decision making involves coordination, or weighing and balancing of different moral and social goals, or of different and competing moral goals. Processes of coordination are also central to explanations of age‐related continuities and discontinuities in moral development. The body of research on distinct social domains, the development of moral judgments, and orientations to cultural practices supports a structural‐constructivist and relational theory of moral development.
Systems Methods for Developmental Research
Authors: Molenaar Peter C. M. , Nesselroade John R.
Published: March 2015

In this chapter a broad variety of aspects of dynamic systems approaches is discussed, including heuristic descriptions of methodological issues, experimental designs, mathematical models associated with such approaches and, in particular, statistical methods to fit dynamic systems models to appropriate empirical data. The authors start with a breakthrough in statistical modeling that has fundamental consequences for developmental science. It is shown that a general mathematical theory, called ergodic theory, puts dynamic systems approaches at the center of statistical modeling in developmental science. A general dynamic factor model is presented, which captures most of the statistical models that are appropriate in linear dynamic systems approaches. It is shown how specific variants of dynamic factor models enable critical tests of key characteristics of developmental processes. The chapter continues with an extensive discussion of the implications of nonlinear dynamic systems approaches for an important topic in developmental science: the analysis of stage‐wise development. Special emphasis is given here to neural network models and dynamic systems models based on catastrophe theory. The chapter closes with a heuristic presentation of mathematical control theory of dynamic systems as an important tool for optimal guidance of developmental processes.
Neuroscientific Methods With Children
Authors: de Haan Michelle
Published: March 2015

Neuroscientific methods can be used to capture the structural and functional changes happening in the human nervous system as it develops throughout infancy, childhood, adolescence, and across the life span. This chapter begins with an overview of issues that influence the way that the brain can be measured and how these measurements can be interpreted. It then goes on to describe methods for measuring development of brain structure, including structural magnetic resonance imaging, diffusion tensor imaging and ultrasounds. Next, methods for measuring functional brain development are described, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, near infrared spectroscopy, electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, and electromyography. In the last section, methods for assessing the autonomic nervous system are described, including measures of both the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches. The chapter closes with discussion of what neuroscientific methods can add to behavioral research, and highlights both their advantages and limitations.
Growth Curve Modeling and Longitudinal Factor Analysis
Authors: Ram Nilam , Grimm Kevin J.
Published: March 2015

In psychological science, developmentalists are often interested in examining and understanding change processes. In this chapter we review a variety of longitudinal models and consider how they can be applied to examine intraindividual change and interindividual differences in change. First, a taxonomy describing three types of change processes (incremental change processes, transformational change processes, and stability‐maintenance processes) is presented and how a selection of contemporary longitudinal models can be tethered to that taxonomy is considered. A selection of growth models–with emphasis on models that are used to describe nonlinear trajectories–is reviewed and a shift toward the use of differential equations is suggested. A selection of time‐series models is shown, with emphasis on models that may facilitate analysis of the big data streams that will become available in few years. Although the distinctions among types of change processes and among analytical frameworks are necessarily fuzzy, the hope is that by explicitly discussing the analytical methods as abstract representations of core aspects of change, researchers will be able to select study designs and analytical procedures that map to and more precisely test their theories of change. The chapter finishes with some notes on implementation, with encouragement for further consideration of nonlinearity, to measure more frequently, and to label parameters with theoretically meaningful names.
Perceptual Development
Authors: Johnson Scott P. , Hannon Erin E.
Published: March 2015

Infants' perceptual systems are the primary means to acquire and interpret knowledge about events, objects, and people in the world around them. This chapter begins with discussion of theories of perceptual development and its consequences for children's cognitive and social development. We then discuss neural foundations of perception and the emergence and maturation of sensory systems before and after birth, followed by detailed sections on audition, vision, and intermodal perception. Throughout, we focus on questions of how the developing child extracts meaningful information from the sensory array—that is, how the observer detects, synthesizes, and interprets sensory input so as to yield perception of structured events and objects—and how effects of experience on perceptual development interact with developmental timing and what has already been acquired. We focus also on developmental mechanisms—growth, experience, and learning—and we examine as well the malleability, or plasticity, of perceptual systems during development. The chapter concludes with discussion of how different theoretical views may be reconciled in light of the developing child in a wider context.
The Development of Symbolic Representation
Authors: Callaghan Tara , Corbit John
Published: March 2015

Symbolic representation is fundamentally a communicative behavior that sets humans apart from other species and binds them together in communities and other social groups. This chapter examines the development of symbolic representation, and we restrict our review to studies of symbolic representation in the sense of external symbols used in communication with others. We begin the chapter by considering the varieties of definitions, theoretical approaches and recurring themes that have emerged from classical and contemporary approaches. In the next section, dominant themes from contemporary theory guide our review of the empirical findings from studies of language (including gesture), pretense, and material artifacts (including scale models, pictures, video and maps). We consider findings from comparative research and cultural developmental studies to deepen our understanding of the origin of human symbolic representation. We end the chapter with a consideration of the challenges facing researchers who would like to move the field beyond insightful descriptions of the course of symbolic development, toward process accounts of that development.
The Development of Play
Authors: Lillard Angeline S.
Published: March 2015

Play is a quintessential activity of childhood, the cognitive implications of which have generated longstanding theoretical and empirical interest. This chapter begins with the difficult issue of how to define play, then considers the two classic play theories, those of Piaget and Vygotsky. Next it covers varieties of play, from sensorimotor to physical, and from exploratory to symbolic, including the developmental course of each type. The bulk of the chapter concerns six current focal issues in play and cognitive development: (1) pretend play and theory of mind, (2) how children make sense of symbolic substitutions in pretend play, (3) constraints on object substitutions in children's play, (4) how children discriminate pretend from real, (5) how babies are initiated into pretend play, and (6) whether pretend play improves developmental outcomes. The next sections of the chapter address group differences in play by gender, developmental differences (visual and hearing impairments, autism), and culture, and the final section addresses future directions in play research.
Conceptual Development
Authors: Sloutsky Vladimir
Published: March 2015

This chapter is concerned withhowchildren acquire conceptual knowledge and how domains themselves may emerge as a consequence of learning and development. I organize the material using a theoretical framework that includes three important aspects to human concepts. First, there is the ability to form categories (or equivalence classes of discriminable entities) by focusing on commonalities and abstracting away differences. Second, there is the ability to lexicalize some of these categories and use the word in reference to an individual and the entire class. Third, there is the ability to use words as knowledge hubs for accumulating knowledge about these lexicalized categories, and subsequently form more abstract categories and make predictions. I argue that the ability to form categories is shared with other mammals and perhaps with other vertebrates, whereas the latter two abilities are uniquely human. Finally, I consider the basic ability to learn and use categories as well as the ability to form and use lexicalized concepts serving as knowledge hubs.
The Development of Executive Function
Authors: Müller Ulrich , Kerns Kimberly
Published: March 2015

Research on executive function has grown dramatically over the past three decades. Even though the term emerged only 40 years ago, the concept of executive function can be traced back to far earlier clinical and empirical research on the frontal lobes. After a brief overview of the history of executive function, we discuss influential theories of executive function. We next review the development of the prefrontal cortex and the neural substrate, which has been associated with executive function, and summarize research on particular component processes of executive function. Research on executive function faces a variety of methodological challenges that we review in the next section. The sources of executive function development are examined in the next section, with particular emphasis on the ways in which social factors and language facilitate its development. Our next section summarizes research of executive function on two other domains of functioning, namely, social understanding and academic achievement. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that executive function should be studied as a distributed process that develops as a result on the child's embodied interaction within a social context.
The Development of Temporal Cognition
Authors: McCormack Teresa
Published: March 2015

Time features in two key ways in cognition, each of which is discussed in turn in this chapter: Time is processed as a dimension of stimuli or events, and time is represented as a framework in which events can be located. Section 1 examines the first of these from a developmental perspective, by reviewing research on age‐related changes in the accuracy of duration processing. The Piagetian approach linked changes in duration processing to the development of a concept of time as a dimension of events separable from other event dimensions. This is contrasted with research conducted within the framework of scalar expectancy theory, which models development in terms of changes in components of specialized timing processes. Section 2 discusses developmental changes in the temporal frameworks that children use to represent the locations of events. Although as adults, we represent time as locations on a linear framework stretching from the past, to the present, and into the future, this way of representing time is not developmentally basic. A model is proposed of developmental stages in the acquisition of a mature temporal framework. The chapter concludes by considering two themes that cut across Sections 1 and 2: the issue of whether there are both qualitative and quantitative changes in children's temporal abilities, and the link between temporal and spatial cognition.
The Development of Mathematical Reasoning
Authors: Nunes Terezinha , Bryant Peter
Published: March 2015

Psychological research on the development of children's mathematical reasoning has focused either on their understanding of quantities or on their knowledge of number. A synthesis between these two different kinds of theory can be achieved by acknowledging that numbers have two meanings: a representational meaning, defined by their use as signs for quantities or relations between quantities, and an analytical meaning, defined by the conventions in the number system. In the introduction, this chapter introduces these two meanings of numbers and explores the vital connections between them. The subsequent sections analyze how children's mathematical knowledge develops by their increasing ability to use different numerical representations (e.g., from the use of fingers to represent quantities to the use of conventional signs), by their growing understanding of invariant relations between quantities (e.g., realizing that, given a fixed number of cookies, the more people sharing the cookies, the less each one receives) and by their increasing awareness of the relevance of specific concepts to different situations (e.g., understanding the relevance of division to the solution of situations more readily connected to multiplication). Throughout the chapter, the connection between the nature of quantities and their numerical representations is explored. The final substantive section focuses on the use of numbers to quantify space and relations between spatial dimensions, and argues that understanding relations between different dimensions in space (e.g., length, width, and area) is crucial to quantifying space. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of directions for future research.
Literacy Development
Authors: Lonigan Christopher J.
Published: March 2015

This chapter discusses literacy development by, first, outlining the nature of the reading of text in alphabetic languages. The process of acquiring word‐level reading skills is then described, including learning the alphabetic code, early decoding, and the development of word reading. In turn, processes associated with reading comprehension are discussed in regard to lower order skills, higher order skills, and construction–integration models. The chapter then considers the early development of reading‐related skills and discusses the behavior genetics of these skills and emergent literacy and its development. Issues related to the nature and identification of reading difficulties and disorders are discussed, and, finally, different approaches to reading instruction and the evidence in support of these approaches, with a focus on early instruction, are described.
Artistic Development
Authors: Milbrath Constance , McPherson Gary E. , Osborne Margaret S.
Published: March 2015

Archaeological evidence indicates that modern humans have been making music, portable art, and painting the walls of caves for at least the last 35,000 years. Through the activities of drawing and song these two art forms are also the first in which young children take an active part. In this chapter, we review what is known about children's artistic development in the visual arts and music, focusing on the historical and theoretical grounding of artistic development, the psychological and physical attributes of the developing child that play a role in children's artistry, and the sociocultural contexts in which child art and development occurs. The chapter is divided into two major sections, one on the visual arts and a second on music. Each section begins by describing the known inceptions of the art form and the historical and contemporary approaches to children's development in these arts, followed by a review of research considering children's developmental achievements and underlying competencies in the artistic domain. Studies of atypically developing children and inquiries into children's understanding and aesthetic experience of the art form are also presented. A discussion of cultural differences in artistic practice and the influences these different practices have on children's artistic outcomes concludes each major section.
Measuring Socioemotional Development
Authors: Brownell Celia A. , Lemerise Elizabeth A. , Pelphrey Kevin A. , Roisman Glenn I.
Published: March 2015

In this chapter, we review and evaluate the three primary sources of measures in research on socioemotional development: observational methods; verbal reports, including interviews and questionnaires; and psychobiological approaches, including neurophysiological, psychophysiological, and genetic assessments. Issues of reliability and validity are discussed along with the advantages and disadvantages of each approach to measurement. Illustrations are provided for children of different ages and issues unique to each class of measurement are also considered. The chapter begins with a discussion of common issues that cut across measurement approaches, some of which are unique to developmental science; these include measuring continuity and discontinuity, stability and change, and the roles of participant characteristics and measurement contexts. The chapter closes with a discussion of future opportunities and challenges, including the adoption of measurement approaches that capture complex transactions across levels of analysis from genes to brains to behavior; neuroimaging of social interaction; and the triangulation of methods and measures across observations, verbal reports, and psychobiology to provide a “molecules‐to‐mind” approach to the study of socioemotional development.
Evolution and Prenatal Development
Authors: Coall David A. , Callan Anna C. , Dickins Thomas E. , Chisholm James S.
Published: March 2015

The crucial impact prenatal influences have on development has been recognized for millennia. It is now known that the environment experienced during pregnancy influences development in a way that has consequences for physical and mental health throughout life. This burgeoning field of enquiry encapsulates a broad range of disciplines, but until recently these fields of research were not synthesized or unified. Over the past 30 years, evolutionary theory has been utilized to improve scientists' understanding of the impact prenatal influences have on development. This chapter begins by outlining evolutionary theory and its interaction with development leading to the emerging significance of modern epigenetics. Life history theory, a branch of evolutionary theory that is applied to the interaction between developmental and evolutionary processes, is then used as a framework for the subsequent discussion of prenatal development. The impacts that maternal stress, maternal nutrition, and the exposure to toxins and pollutants during pregnancy have on prenatal development are then explored. This chapter ends by highlighting empirical and theoretical pathways developed out of this unique multilevel synthesis that are likely to be dynamic areas of research into the future.
Socioemotional Consequences of Illness and Disability
Authors: Crnic Keith , Neece Cameron
Published: March 2015

This chapter addresses core developmental approaches to understanding the nature of social and emotional consequences of illness and disability during the developmental period.

The chapter addresses the ways in whichdevelopmental disabilitiesandchronic illnessshare a particular risk status, but can also be differentiated. Definitions and epidemiology are broadly considered to set the stage for the specific social and emotional domains to be reviewed.

Three basic domains are addressed in depth:social and peer competencies, emotion and emotion regulation,andbehavior and emotion problems. Disabilities and chronic illnesses are discussed both separately and together within these domains. The shifting nature of the conceptual paradigms used to understand the consequences of chronic conditions (pathology versus adaptationalor positive approaches) are discussed.

Both endogenous and exogenous factors that contribute to the consequences of chronic conditions are addressed.Genetic approacheshighlight the endogenous considerations, whilefamily, school, and cultural factorsare the focus of the exogenous factors that contribute. These considerations lead to a discussion ofintervention approachesthat have addressed socioemotional competencies in children with chronic conditions.

The chapter concludes with a review of thecurrent state of the field,and suggestions for thenext generation of researchfor the field.
Race, Class, and Ethnicity in Young Adulthood
Authors: McLoyd Vonnie C. , Purtell Kelly M. , Hardaway Cecily R.
Published: March 2015

This chapter examines how social class, race, and ethnicity shape the transition to adulthood, drawing heavily on life course theory, developmental contextualism, and the concepts of risk, resilience, and social capital as analytic anchors. Four domains of functioning are discussed—conceptions of adulthood, mental health, paid employment, and educational attainment. Emphasis is given to studies that illuminate processes that link social location to the development of youth (mediational processes) and studies that examine sources of variation in developmental pathways among economically disadvantaged and ethnic minority youth, with special attention to the positive end of the risk dimension (i.e., promotive factors). We also highlight protective factors, that is, factors and processes that mitigate the negative effects of economic advantage and ethnic minority status on the functioning of youth during the transition to adulthood. Each major section of the chapter concludes with a summary and discussion of questions and issues that merit study in future research. The chapter emphasizes research based on U.S. samples, but incorporates research findings from youth in Canada and Western European countries.
Gendered Development
Authors: Hines Melissa
Published: March 2015

How does human behavior come to be gendered, and how do gendered behaviors change or remain stable over time? Although men and women, as well as girls and boys, are largely similar psychologically and behaviorally, there are some areas of gender difference. These include gender identity; sexual orientation; childhood play behaviors, such as toy, playmate, and activity preferences; personality characteristics, such as aggression and empathy; and some specific spatial, mathematical, and verbal abilities. The incidence of many psychiatric disorders also differs by sex. These gender differences appear to result from numerous factors and their interactions. These include genetic information on the sex chromosomes; concentrations of gonadal steroids, particularly testosterone, before and shortly after birth; socialization by parents, peers, teachers, and strangers; and cognitive developmental processes. Gender identity also is a mechanism for acquiring gendered behavior; based on this identity, children self‐socialize gendered behavior. These factors have been shown to act individually to influence gendered outcomes. They are also likely to interact with one another to shape gender development, but little research has investigated these interactions. An understanding of gendered development is important for addressing differences between the sexes in social roles and economic status, and should also be relevant to understanding and ameliorating psychiatric disorders that differ by gender. A complete understanding will probably require developmental systems approaches to understanding change and stability over time, but, thus far, such approaches have been uncommon.
The Development of Sexuality
Authors: Diamond Lisa M. , Bonner Susan B. , Dickenson Janna
Published: March 2015

This chapter provides a comprehensive review of current research on children's and adolescents' sexual motivations, desires, and behaviors, and the multiple factors that influence the unfolding of their sexual‐developmental trajectories. We adopt the view that sexual desire and behavior represent normative features of child and adolescent development that have the potential to foster and enhance the happiness, psychological development, and well‐being of youth, but also introduce health risks and concerns. We review research on developmental changes in sexual desire and motivation, participation in partnered and unpartnered sexual behavior, contextual influences on sexual expression, prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, sexual coercion, and the growing influence of digital media use. We also review the unique experiences of youth with same‐sex attractions and behavior, as well as with atypical gender expression (i.e.,transgenderyouth). We conclude with specific recommendations for future research, aiming to provide a generative roadmap to the next generation of scientific research on this critical—but still understudied—area of human development.
Children in Peer Groups
Authors: Rubin Kenneth H. , Bukowski William M. , Bowker Julie C.
Published: March 2015

The features, processes, and effects of children's experiences with their peers exist on multiple levels of social complexity and intersect with many other developmental domains. Peers are implicated in several theoretical accounts of multiple development domains, including the models proposed by Piaget, Sullivan, the social learning theorists, Vygotsky, ethologists, and the symbolic interactionists. The extensive data base on peer relations points to the diverse set of positive and negative experiences that children and adolescents can have with their peers and to the breadth of the processes that account for peer effects on multiple forms of outcome including behavior (e.g., aggression), affect (e.g., depression, anxiety), school performance, self‐perceptions, moral perspectives, and physical and mental health. The chapter reviews the effects of several experiences including acceptance and rejection, exclusion, friendship, victimization, popularity, and experiences within groups. Specific attention is devoted to variation in processes and effects as a function of culture and gender.
Children and Digital Media
Authors: Calvert Sandra L.
Published: March 2015

Children of the early 21st century live and grow embedded in a digital world in which observational media experiences are increasingly integrated with interactive ones. Children use digital media for numerous reasons, ranging from entertainment, to gaining information about themselves and the world around them, to regulating moods, to finding electronic friends to keep them company. This chapter documents the promises and perils of children's media experiences, including prosocial, positive constructive outcomes and antisocial, aggressive actions. The chapter ends with a description of media policies and a look forward about what children's social, cognitive, and physical development will be like in this rapidly changing media landscape which is increasingly at children's fingertips.
Children in Diverse Social Contexts
Authors: Murry Velma McBride , Hill Nancy E. , Witherspoon Dawn , Berkel Cady , Bartz Deborah
Published: March 2015

Children grow up in families with cultural backgrounds and beliefs, and in families with varying financial resources and social capital. They reside in communities and neighborhoods that are homogeneous or diverse, with varying levels of resources and risks. The primary purpose of this chapter is to draw attention to and integrate knowledge on contextual factors for a more holistic understanding of normative development. This chapter synthesizes extant studies that have examined ways in which race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographic residence, immigration status, and family formation status (e.g., transracial adoption) are associated with both normative (e.g., social emotional well‐being, academic aspiration, prosocial friendships) and nonnormative (e.g., externalizing behaviors, high‐risk behaviors, school dropout,) child development; identifies methodological and theoretical strengths and weaknesses of extant studies; and provides recommendations to advance future studies of child development in diverse contexts.
Children's Housing and Physical Environments
Authors: Bradley Robert H.
Published: March 2015

Children live in a world dense with actions, objects, people, and events. Through time these phenomena provide the structure for development and the ingredients that help determine its course. In this chapter attention will be given to various aspects of the houses children live in and the natural and built environments surrounding them, with a view to explicating how each is implicated in children's behavior and development. The chapter begins with a consideration of several conceptual frameworks that bear upon how children might experience the structures, objects, and sensory stimuli in places where they spend time and what those experiences might mean for their health, competence, and adaptive functioning. Thereafter is a review of what is known about various aspects of housing conditions, the materials and facilities within the house, and the nearby physical environment, with attention to how each may affect children's behavior and well‐being. The third section moves beyond a consideration of particular aspects of the environment to a consideration of overall environmental chaos (i.e., how the structure of events and conditions in space and time affect health and behavioral tendencies). The chapter concludes with an effort to put issues pertaining to the physical environment in historic context, with a view to the future.
Children and Socioeconomic Status
Authors: Duncan Greg J. , Magnuson Katherine , Votruba‐Drzal Elizabeth
Published: March 2015

Connections between children's family socioeconomic position (SES), their early experiences, and later life outcomes are both strong and complicated. This chapter guides readers through the theoretical perspectives and empirical studies linking family SES to children's development, and summarizes which areas are well understood and which need more research. The chapter begins by reviewing how scholars define and measure family SES and focuses on its three most common indicators: income and poverty, parental education, and parental occupation. In the next section, demographic and economic trends in SES components are reviewed, with specific attention devoted to trends in inequality. Next, the three main theoretical approaches for explaining how SES affects child development are summarized: the family and environmental stress perspective, the resource and investment perspective, and cultural perspectives. We then describe methodological challenges that researchers face when trying to estimate causal associations between SES and child development and review the empirical literature. Finally, we discuss the implications of the research findings for policy and suggest key unanswered theoretical and empirical questions regarding how household SES affects children and families.
Children in Medical Settings
Authors: Zuckerman Barry , Keder Robert D.
Published: March 2015

The health needs of children have evolved over the past century. This chapter reviews biomedical innovations leading to changes in children's health and health care delivery across various medical settings. Special emphasis is placed on the changing epidemiology of children's disease and increasing emphasis on child development, behavior, and mental health. The most significant change in children's health is a decrease in death and an increase in chronic disease. Child health care has evolved in different locations for the care of children each of which are reviewed in this chapter: primary care, emergency care, inpatient medicine, and the neonatal intensive care unit. Finally, implications and changes for the future of the health care of children are presented. Throughout the chapter, examples of disease are presented to provide a clinical context for these changing forces and dynamics.
Children in War and Disaster
Authors: Masten Ann S. , Narayan Angela J. , Silverman Wendy K. , Osofsky Joy D.
Published: March 2015

Every year, millions of young people are exposed to the dangers and trauma of disasters, war, terror, and political conflict. This chapter highlights findings from research on children and youth who endure these experiences, examined from a risk and resilience framework and grounded in relational developmental systems theory. Findings from the 21st century are emphasized, although historically important studies are also considered. Variations in response to these mass‐trauma experiences are discussed in relation to dose‐response gradients, developmental cascades and pathways, and moderators of risk at the individual, family, and sociocultural levels. New directions of research are examined, including efforts to integrate knowledge on neurobiological, behavioral, and cultural processes. Implications are delineated for future research as well as efforts to promote resilience through intervention and preparedness. Given the scope of the threats to global child development posed by war and disaster, there is remarkably little empirical research on the interventions that protect children or promote their recovery. Research is needed to elucidate the processes of risk and resilience in the context of mass trauma. In the meantime, general guidelines are provided for policy and practice, gleaned from the extant literature. Experiences of war and disaster test the limits of human capacity for change and recovery, and they may illuminate processes of adaptation that enrich and challenge developmental theory.
Children and Cultural Context
Authors: Goodnow Jacqueline J. , Lawrence Jeanette A.
Published: March 2015

There have been changes in the conceptual frames and research approaches that consider the development of children in relation to culture, the cultural, or to (our preference) cultural contexts. The chapter begins with an analysis of conceptual frames and the splits and dichotomies that have regarded change as unidirectional and unidimensional, neglecting the intertwining of the personal with the social and the cultural. We examine shifts in conceptual frames and research approaches in five lines of analysis, noting the changes that have occurred, the questions raised, and the changes that may take analyses in new directions. Cutting across these lines of analysis are proposals about the nature of context, the nature of development, and their interconnections. In any situation, children experience more than one, often competing cultural contexts, and more than one way of thinking, feeling and acting. We propose moving beyond separations, beyond seeing contexts as one‐dimensional and individuals as solo, moving instead to analyses of the two as intertwined.
Baudrillard, Jean
Authors: Kellner Douglas
Published: March 2015

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) first emerged as an important theorist of consumption and the consumer society. His early work in these areas focuses on what he called the system of objects, the consumer society, and a critique of the political economy of the sign. These texts combined neo‐Marxian social theory with the sort of cultural semiotics associated with Roland Barthes, the critique of everyday life associated with Henri Lefebvre, and the radical critique of existing consumer society by Guy Debord and the Situationists
Bourdieu, Pierre
Authors: Riegel Viviane
Published: March 2015

Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) was a French sociologist who had considerable influence on the social sciences, and on studies of consumption in particular. He recognized that consumption was indispensable in modernity. In his major work,
Distinction
(1984), one of the most important works in the social sciences published in the twentieth century, he analyzes the mechanisms of the reproduction of social hierarchies, through which he develops his theory of practice. Bourdieu considered power as culturally and symbolically created through the connection of principles of action and classification (habitus + taste + lifestyle), mainly with cultural and symbolic capitals, which contribute to the position takings (fields) that are formed within society. He didn't consider consumption as an autonomous field, and his perspective was focused on the economic hierarchy. On the basis of Bourdieu's theory, contemporary authors have developed a new perspective where consumers have the possibility of being creative and of making choices through consumption.
Citizenship and Consumption
Authors: Kuehn Kathleen
Published: March 2015

Traditionally, citizenship and consumption have been regarded as oppositional human activities. The ideal of the outwardly focused citizen denotes a commitment to the larger public interest, in contrast to the inwardly focused consumer whose primary concerns are centered on the self. This binary has been challenged by economic and cultural historians, however, who point to the range of ways that citizenship and consumption have long overlapped in the form of political revolutions, boycotts, identity, meaning making, corporate social responsibility, and cause‐related marketing and consumer movements. The confluence between citizenship and consumption, though at times rife with tensions and paradoxes, constitutes an increasingly popular form of social, political, and civic engagement in contemporary society.
Consumer Activism
Authors: Tohill Joseph J.
Published: March 2015

Consumer activism is the collective use of consumer purchasing power for political ends. It encompasses diverse actions, especially boycotts, by people who make consumption choices with the goal of changing market or institutional practices and/or influencing corporate and public policymakers. The ultimate goal of consumer activists is usually to create what they see as a socially just marketplace. Consumer activism recognizes seemingly nonpolitical or private arenas (such as the market or the home) as venues for political action. It recognizes the connections between consumer choices and labor rights, corporate behavior, the environment, and human rights. Consumer activism has a long history and has been an important tactic in many social movements. The efficacy of consumer activism is often difficult to measure and therefore open to debate. Green and ethical consumption, fair trade, socially responsible investing, culture jamming, and anti‐sweatshop campaigns are among the dominant forms of consumer activism today.