Story of Human Development, The

For undergraduate courses in Lifespan Development

The Story of Human Development creates an engaging and original framework by integrating material on the typical individual's physical, cognitive, emotional, and social developments with how they might develop in different environmental contexts.

Faced with the challenge of authoring a text that could be current, scholarly, and comprehensive while also being readable and practical, authors Debra Poole, Amye Warren, and Narina Nuñez created The Story of Human Development 1.e, a far departure from the ordinary human development text. By organizing the text with each age bracket represented by a two-chapter pair, the authors are able to examine all aspects of the development process. With a narrative infused with the rich and diverse stories of people’s lives, compelling arrangement, unique connecting summaries, and a focus on guiding developmental principles, this text puts the science of human development into a framework that better explains and explores how a whole person develops within varying environmental contexts. 

1.      Introduction to Human Development

2.      Heredity and Environment

3.      Prenatal Development and Birth

4.      Profile of the First Three Years

5.      Pathways Through the First three Years

6.      Profile of Early Childhood

7.      Pathways through Early Childhood

8.      Profile of Middle and Late Childhood

9.      Pathways through Middle and late Childhood

10.    Profile of Adolescence

11.    Pathways through Adolescence

12.    Profile of Early to Middle Adulthood

13.    Pathways through Early to Middle Adulthood

14.    Profile of Middle to Late Adulthood

15.    Pathways through Middle to Late Adulthood

 Epilogue: The End of Life

This is a first edition.

Compelling Organization:

Rather than providing snapshots of development in isolation, The Story of Human Development is organized to demonstrate how a whole person develops in context.  To accomplish this goal, each age period is organized in a new way to reflect the current state of the field, while still using a chronological framework.  After three introductory chapters, each age range of the life span is covered using two interrelated chapters.  The first chapter, Profile of. . ., describes what a typical individual is like by summarizing the physical, cognitive, emotional and social developments of that age range.  The second chapter, Pathways through. . ., explores how individuals develop in different environmental contexts.  This organization allows students to immediately see how the achievement of specific developmental milestones influences the whole person, and how a whole person is influenced by their environment.  Students are better able to apply the science of the field to their lives and careers because they can better appreciate the development of an individual, not just their developmental “parts”.  See pages xx-xx for a brief Table of Contents that illustrates this paired chapter organization. 

Unique Connecting Summaries

The paired chapters are tied together through a two-page connecting Profile/Pathways Summary. This feature falls between paired chapters to revisit the typical developmental milestones that occur during the early, middle and later years of that age range and previews some of the major contextual influences that will be explored in the upcoming chapter.  See pages xx-xx for an example of the Profile/Pathways Summary for Early Childhood, Chapters 4 & 5. 

Guiding Developmental Principles:

Four guiding principles are introduced in Chapter 1:

• Development is the joint product of nature and nurture
• Physical, Cognitive, and Socio-economic development are interrelated
• Developmental outcomes vary over time and contexts
• Development is characterized by continuity and discontinuity

These principles thread through the text by appearing in the Revisiting Developmental Principles feature at the end of each Pathways chapter.

Stories of Our Lives

            Each chapter opens with a true story that illustrates a central theme in the material to come. Examples throughout the text are about real people (although often we changed names to protect people’s privacy and sometimes spliced interviews or observations of several people into a single example). To avoid cumbersome language, we refer to everyone one of us knows as “our friend so and so.” 

Don’t Be Fooled!, Solutions, and Innovations

Everyone needs critical thinking skills to avoid jumping to the wrong conclusions. We use these skills whenever we spot that a “fact” in a magazine is implausible, realize that a study described as a controlled experiment is not a controlled experiment, and understand that a short-term solution for unwanted behavior may lead to long-term problems. Periodic Don’t Be Fooled! features build critical thinking skills by focusing on individual issues that have special relevance for human development research. Two other textbox features provide a look at day-to-day life, both now and in the future. Solutions features provide practical advice for solving life problems and Innovations features explain contributions from cutting-edge technologies or research.

How do you integrate physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive development to show the entire person? Do your students have trouble understanding how all the different aspects of development make a person?

Rather than providing snapshots of development in isolation, The Story of Human Development is organized to demonstrate how a whole person develops in context.  To accomplish this goal, each age period is organized in a new way to reflect the current state of the field, while still using a chronological framework.  After three introductory chapters, each age range of the life span is covered using two interrelated chapters.  

• Profile of. . ., describes what a typical individual is like by summarizing the physical, cognitive, emotional and social developments of that age range.  
• Pathways through. . ., explores how individuals develop in different environmental contexts.  This organization allows students to immediately see how the achievement of specific developmental milestones influences the whole person, and how a whole person is influenced by their environment. 
• Students are better able to apply the science of the field to their lives and careers because they can better appreciate the development of an individual, not just their developmental “parts”.
• The paired chapters are tied together through a two-page connecting Profile/Pathways Summary. This feature falls between paired chapters to revisit the typical developmental milestones that occur during the early, middle and later years of that age range and previews some of the major contextual influences that will be explored in the upcoming chapter.

How do you demonstrate contextual/environmental influences on the typical development of people? 

• Pathways through. . ., directly focuses on the contextual influences that affect people as they develop in the "real world". As demonstrated in Chapter 9, Pathways through Middle and Late Childhood, physical abuse threatens children’s development by changing the way they attend to and interpret information, which affects their learning in school and how they get along with peers. Now that scientists have monitored the brains of abused children, tracked their academic progress, and looked at their social relationships, it isn’t clear whether the topic of abuse should appear under physical, cognitive, or social development. The "problem" is that a whole person develops—not fragmented parts. The Story of Human Development solves this problem by showing the whole person in context.

How do you encourage critical thinking in your course? Would you like a text that helps to develop critical thinking skills?

• With The Story of Human Development three featured elements encourage and develop students' critical thinking skills:
• Don’t Be Fooled! Everyone needs critical thinking skills to avoid jumping to the wrong conclusions. We use these skills whenever we spot that a “fact” in a magazine is implausible, realize that a study described as a controlled experiment is not a controlled experiment, and understand that a short-term solution for unwanted behavior may lead to long-term problems. Periodic Don’t Be Fooled! features build critical thinking skills by focusing on individual issues that have special relevance for human development research.
• Solutions, and Innovations Textboxes. Provide a look at day-to-day life, both now and in the future. The Solutions feature provides practical advice for solving life problems and the Innovations feature explains contributions from cutting-edge technologies or research.

How important is it to have a text that incorporates real world examples and applications?

• The Story of Development has real life stories that begin each chapter. Examples throughout the book are based on actual people and situations.

The text also focuses on 4 Guiding Developmental Principles which are introduced in Chapter 1:

• Development is the joint product of nature and nurture
• Physical, Cognitive, and Socio-economic development are interrelated
• Developmental outcomes vary over time and contexts
• Development is characterized by continuity and discontinuity

These principles thread through the text by appearing in the Revisiting Developmental Principles feature at the end of each Pathways chapter.

Poole's The Story of Human Development also comes with MyDevelopmentLab! To take a tour of MyDevelopmentLab, please visit: www.mydevelopmentlab.com.

Debra Poole received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut and her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Iowa. She began her career at Beloit College in Wisconsin and then relocated to Central Michigan University, where she is a professor in the Department of Psychology. Deb is an expert on children’s eyewitness testimony, false memories, and techniques for interviewing children and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. She drafted the forensic interviewing protocol that is used in Michigan using recommendations from her book with Michael Lamb, Investigative Interviews of Children: A Guide for Helping Professionals (1998), as the model.

Amye Warren attended the Georgia Institute of Technology as a National Merit Scholar for her bachelor’s degree and stayed to earn a doctoral degree in applied and experimental psychology with concentrations in developmental and cognitive psychology. She then began her career-long position in the Psychology Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), where she holds the Patricia Draper Obear Distinguished Teaching Professorship. She has published numerous articles on children’s language and memory development, the abilities of children as witnesses in the legal system, proper and improper techniques for interviewing child witnesses, and the relation between early language development and later reading abilities.

Narina Nuñez earned her bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Cortland and her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Cornell University. She then joined the psychology faculty at the University of Wyoming where she currently serves as chair of the department with a joint appointment in the Department of Criminal Justice. Her research has included studies of the impact of child maltreatment on development, how jurors perceive children and adolescents, and whether modifications in interviewing techniques can improve children’s testimony. Nuñez serves on the editorial board of the journal, Child Maltreatment, and recently received the George Duke Humphrey Outstanding Faculty Award from her university.

• Companion Website - Poole
  http://www.prenhall.com/poole