How do children acquire the vast array of concepts, strategies, and skills that distinguish the thinking of infants and toddlers from that of preschoolers, older children, and adolescents? In this new book, Robert Siegler addresses these and other fundamental questions about children's thinking. Previous theories have tended to depict cognitive development much like a staircase. At an early age, children think in one way; as they get older, they step up to increasingly higher ways of thinking. Siegler proposes that viewing the development within an evolutionary framework is more useful than a staircase model. The evolution of species depends on mechanisms for generating variability, for choosing adaptively among the variants, and for preserving the lessons of past experience so that successful variants become increasingly prevalent. The development of children's thinking appears to depend on mechanisms to fulfill these same functions. Siegler's theory is consistent with a great deal of evidence. It unifies phenomena from such areas as problem solving, reasoning, and memory, and reveals commonalities in the thinking of people of all ages. Most important, it leads to valuable insights regarding a basic question about children's thinking asked by cognitive, developmental, and educational psychologists: How does change occur?

From the award-winning author of A Questionable Shape and White Dialogues, a brilliant, anxious, and hilarious new collection. A man lends his phone to a stranger in the mall, setting off an uncanny series of Unknown calls that come to haunt his relationship with jealousy and dread. A well-meaning locavore tries to butcher his backyard chickens humanely, only to find himself absorbed into the absurd violence of the pecking order. A student applying for a philosophy fellowship struggles to project himself into the thoughts of his hypothetical judges, becoming increasingly possessed and overpowered by the problem of other minds. And in “The Postcard,” a private detective is hired to investigate a posthumous message that a widower has seemingly received from his dead wife, leading him into a foggy landscape of lost memories, shifting identities, and strange doublings. Cerebral and eerie, captivating and profound, these twelve stories expertly guide us through the paranoia and obsession of everyday horrors, not least the horrors of overthinking what other people might be thinking. With all of Sims’s trademark virtuosity, innovation, and wit, Other Minds and Other Stories continues to expand the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

This volume is unique in integrating different domains of psychology, at both theoretical and empirical levels of analysis, in order to understand the development of the human mind. Perspectives include comparative, cultural, and developmental psychology, in addition to neuropsychology. Contributors in this edited collection emphasize both the collective nature of human cognition and the impossibility of separating individuals from their sociocultural environments. They also explain how participation in culture leads to radical changes in an individual's psychological makeup. This volume may also be of interest to anthropologists, philosophy scholars, and semioticians. Major topics include: • Human Development from the Perspective of Comparative Psychology • Culture in the Developing or Regressing Brain • Cultural Perspective on the Human Development • The Role of Culture in Child Development

How the Child's Mind Develops, 2nd Edition.

This fresh and dynamic book offers a thorough investigation into the development of the cognitive processes that underpin judgements about mental states (often termed 'theory of mind') and addresses specific issues that have not been adequately dealt with in the past, and which are now being raised by some of the most prominent researchers in the field.

Born out of the excitement of a convergence of ideas and passions, this book provides a synthesis of the work of researchers, clinicians, and theoreticians who are leaders in the field of trauma, attachment, and psychotherapy. As we move into the third millennium, the field of mental health is in an exciting position to bring together diverse ideas from a range of disciplines that illuminate our understanding of human experience: neurobiology, developmental psychology, traumatology, and systems theory. The contributors emphasize the ways in which the social environment, including relationships of childhood, adulthood, and the treatment milieu change aspects of the structure of the brain and ultimately alter the mind.

Fascinating insight into the life-span and productivity of the non-verbal, visual mind.