Human Development

Kail and Cavanaugh "tell the story of the life span" in a narrative that is intuitive and holistic-eliminating the redundancy of describing the life span via the tradional 5 x 3 of similar organizational structure used by many texts for the course. The book's four-part structure reflects "early childhood," "the school years," "the working/raising children years," and "later life" - a structure that makes sense to strudents and more accurately depicts the developmental process. The author's four-part structure reflects the emerging view in several disciplines that development needs to be viewed in larger sefments to reflect both the reality of large individual differences (not all five-year-olds are the same) and the linkages across the life span of such domains as memory, language, perception, etc. To reflect these issues, the text includes age-specific chapters where essential (prenatal develpment, adolescence, entering adulthood, middle age, later life) and more topical chapter where appropriate to reflect the continuity of development (entering the social world, the school years, relationships, work in adulthood, and dying and bereavement).

Robert V. Kail is Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University. His undergraduate degree is from Ohio Wesleyan University and his Ph.D. is from the University of Michigan. Kail is editor of Child Development Perspectives and editor emeritus of Psychological Science. He received the McCandless Young Scientist Award from the American Psychological Association, was named the Distinguished Sesquicentennial Alumnus in Psychology by Ohio Wesleyan University, and is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. Kail has also written CHILDREN AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT and SCIENTIFIC WRITING FOR PSYCHOLOGY. His research focuses on cognitive development during childhood and adolescence.

John C. Cavanaugh is President and CEO of the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware and his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. Cavanaugh is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Gerontological Society of America, and has served as president of the Adult Development and Aging Division (Division 20) of the APA. Cavanaugh has also written (with the late Fredda Blanchard-Fields) ADULT DEVELOPMENT AND AGING. His research interests in gerontology concern family caregiving as well as the role of beliefs in older adults' cognitive performance.