Includes index

Contents: An orientation to lifespan development: Determining the nature-and nurture-of lifespan development -- Key debates in lifespan development -- Theoretical perspectives on lifespan development -- Research methods -- Genetics, prenatal development, and birth: Earliest development and the foundations of genetics -- Genetic counselling: Predicting the future from the genes of the present -- The interaction of heredity and environment -- prenatal growth and birth -- Physical growth and aging across the lifespan: Physical growth and change -- Brain growth and motor development -- Perceptual development -- Health and wellness: Stress and coping -- Illness and well-being -- Promoting health and wellness -- Cognitive growth:Piaget and Vygotsky: Piaget's approach to cognitive development -- Appraising piaget: Support, challanges, and alternatives -- vygotsky's view of cognitive development: Taking culture into account -- Cognitive growth: Information processing approaches: The basics of information processing -- Attention and memory -- Applying information processing approaches -- Language development: The course of language development -- The origins of language development -- children's conversations: Speaking to and with children -- Intelligence: Intelligence: Determining individual strengths -- Controversies involving intelligence -- Intellectual deficits and the intellectually gifted -- Social and emotional development: Forging early social relationships -- Emotional development -- Personality development across the life span -- Development of the self: The development of the self -- Evaluating the self -- Picking an occupation: Choosing life's work -- Moral development and aggression: Developing morality: Following society's rights and wrongs -- Values, religion, and spirituality: Focusing on the meaning of life -- Aggression and violence -- Gender and sexuality: Gender: Why do boys wear blue and girls wear pink? -- Sexual maturation and sexuality -- Relationships -- Friends and family: Social relationships across the life span -- Family life -- Family ties in middle and adulthood -- Schooling, culture,and society: Living in a multicultural world: Schooling throughout out the life span -- Leisure -- Living in a multicultural world -- Death and dying: Death and dying across the life span -- Confronting death -- Grief and bereavement.