Infants and Children: Prenatal Through Middle Childhood, 7th Edition

Berk’s signature storytelling style invites students to actively learn beside the text’s “characters” who share their influential experiences and developmental milestones. Students are provided with an exceptionally clear and coherent understanding of child development, emphasizing the interrelatedness of all domains—physical, cognitive, emotional, and social—throughout the text narrative and in special features. Focusing on education and social policy as critical pieces of the dynamic system in which the child develops, Berk pays meticulous attention to the most recent scholarship in the field. Berk helps students connect their learning to their personal and professional areas of interest and their future pursuits as parents, educators, heath care providers, counselors, social workers, and researchers.

I. Theory and Research in Child Development

 

1. History, Theory, and Research Strategies

The Field of Child Development

Basic Issues

Historical Foundations

Mid-Twentieth-Century Theories

Recent Theoretical Perspectives

Comparing Child Development Theories

Studying the Child

 

II. Foundations of Development

 

2. Biological and Environmental Foundations

Genetic Foundations

Reproductive Choices

Environmental Contexts for Development

Understanding the Relationship Between Heredity and Environment

 

3. Prenatal Development

Motivations for Parenthood

Prenatal Development

Prenatal Environmental Influences

Preparing for Parenthood

 

4. Birth and the Newborn Baby

The Stages of Childbirth

Approaches to Childbirth

Medical Interventions

Birth Complications

Precious Moments After Birth

The Newborn Baby's Capacities

The Transition to Parenthood

 

III. Infancy and Toddlerhood: The First Two Years

 

5. Physical Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

Body Growth

Brain Development

Influences on Early Physical Growth

Learning Capacities

Motor Development

Perceptual Development

 

6. Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

Piaget's Cognitive-Developmental Theory

Information Processing

The Social Context of Early Cognitive Development

Individual Differences in Early Mental Development

Language Development

 

7. Emotional and Social Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

Erikson's Theory of Infant and Toddler Personality

Emotional Development

Temperament and Development

Development of Attachment

Self-Development

 

IV. Early Childhood: Two to Six Years

 

8. Physical Development in Early Childhood

 

9. Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Piaget's Theory: The Preoperational Stage

Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory

Information Processing

Individual Differences in Mental Development

Language Development

 

10. Emotional and Social Development in Early Childhood

Erikson's Theory: Initiative vs. Guilt

Self-Understanding

Emotional Development

Peer Relations

Foundations of Morality

Gender Typing

Child Rearing and Emotional and Social Development

 

V. Middle Childhood: Six to Eleven Years

 

11. Physical Development in Middle Childhood

Body Growth

Common Health Problems

Health Education

Motor Development and Play

 

12. Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood

Piaget's Theory: The Concrete Operational Stage

Information Processing

Individual Differences in Mental Development

Language Development

Children's Learning in School

 

13. Emotional and Social Development in Middle Childhood

Erikson's Theory

Self-Understanding

Emotional Development

Understanding Others: Perspective Taking

Moral Development

Peer Relations

Gender Typing

Family Influences

Some Common Problems of Development