Advancing Developmental Science: Philosophy, Theory, and Method

Developmental science is an interdisciplinary scientific field dedicated to describing, understanding, and explaining change in behavior across the lifespan and the psychological, environmental, and biological processes that co-determine this change during the organism’s development. Developmental science is thus a broad discipline that lies at the intersection of psychology, biology, sociology, anthropology and other allied disciplines. Advancing Developmental Science: Philosophy, Theory, and Method reflects this broad view of developmental science, and reviews the philosophical, theoretical, and methodological issues facing the field. It does so within the Process-Relational paradigm, as described by developmentalist Willis Overton over the course of his career. Within that framework, this book explores development in a number of specific cognitive, neurobiological, and social domains, and provides students and researchers with a comprehensive suite of conceptual and methodological tools to describe, explain, and optimize intraindividual change across the lifespan.

Anthony Steven Dick is Associate Professor of Developmental Science and Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Program in the Department of Psychology at Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA. His research focus is on the developmental cognitive neuroscience of language and executive function.

Ulrich Müller is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. His research focuses on cognitive and social development in early childhood.