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Zusatztext This is a timely and impressive volume from many of today’s leading scholars in the field of evolutionary developmental psychology, a perspective that is much misunderstood by mainstream developmental psychologists. The volume includes a nice mix of broad theoretical overviews of the discipline and detailed analyses of a wide range of social and cognitive phenomena. As such, it serves both to introduce the perspective to scholars and students who are unfamiliar with it and to illustrate the ways in which evolutionary thinking can inform the study of numerous aspects of development. It would make a marvelous textbook for instructors in search of something to stimulate and challenge the thinking of advanced undergraduate or graduate students interested in child development. Indeed, the next time I teach an advanced course in developmental psychology, I likely will build my syllabus around this book.--Laurence Steinberg, PhD, Department of Psychology, Temple UniversityA cornucopia of new ideas on human development, Origins of the Social Mind is required reading for developmental psychologists.--Steven Pinker, PhD, Department of Psychology, Harvard UniversityThis volume represents the cutting edge of transdisciplinary scholarship. Relying on the theories and methods of evolutionary psychology, it broadens the reach of this emerging discipline to the field of child development. Particularly provocative are integrative, novel theories by Ellis and Belsky on topics of relevance to scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and parents. There is something here for everyone.--Kenneth A. Dodge, PhD, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University-An admirable illustration of the fertility of an evolutionary perspective to study human development. Many of the chapters are excellent and replete of new, stimulating ideas. It also brings together numerous viewpoints on a large number of topics of interest to developmentalists. I highly recommend this book to developmental psychologists and, more generally, to psychologists interested in an evolutionary approach to the mind.--Infant and Child Development, 11/24/2004ƒƒThe contributors to this text have excellent credentials, and Ellis and Bjorklund have done a thorough job editing the text. I was impressed with how incredibly well referenced the chapters are in the book....This is a novel text with many excellent contributing writers....The book is a landmark in the field because it applies evolutionary theory to child development and adds to the nature-nurture debate.--PsycCRITIQUES, 11/24/2004 Informationen zum Autor Bruce J. Ellis, PhD, spent the early years of his career at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand before taking up his current position as an Associate Professor of Family Studies and Human Development at the University of Arizona. He completed his doctoral work in evolutionary psychology at the University of Michigan and his postdoctoral work in the National Institute of Mental Health's Developmental Psychopathology Training Program at Vanderbilt University. The major focus of his research is on testing conditional adaptation models of the effects of early family environments on the timing of pubertal development and first sexual and reproductive activity. Dr. Ellis received the 1999 John F. Kennedy Center Young Scientist Award and has served on the editorial boards of Developmental Psychology , Evolutionary Psychology , Personality and Social Psychology Review , and Personal Relationships . David F. Bjorklund, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University, where he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in developmental psychology since 1976. His research has focused primarily on children's cognitive development, particularly memory and strategy development. More recent interests include the adaptive nature of immaturity, deferred imitation in juvenile great apes, and evol...
