Developmental Cascades

Lisa M. Oakes received her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin in 1991 under the direction of Professor Leslie B. Cohen. Oakes joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology at the University of Iowa in 1991. In 2006, Oakes moved her lab and her family to begin her present position as Professor of Psychology and Faculty Researcher at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis. Here she continues her work examining many aspects of infant cognition, including attention, visual short-term memory, and visual perception. Oakes has published three books and many research articles. Her work is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. David H. Rakison received his D.Phil. at the University of Sussex, England in 1997 under the direction of Professor George Butterworth. Rakison joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in 2000 where he has engaged in research on various aspects ofinfant perception and cognition, including causal perception and causal reasoning, the development of concepts for animacy, fear learning, and the relationship between motor skills and cognitive development. Rakison has published two books and one SRCD monograph in addition to many empirical research articles. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

• 1. Introduction: Why Understanding Development is Hard2. Developmental Mechanisms: Eliminating the Dichotomy 3. The "Humpty-Dumpty Problem" In the Study of Development4. The Role of Constraints in Development5. Developmental Cascades: A New Framework to Understand Change6. The Development of Looking Behavior in Infancy7. Cascades and Object Knowledge8. The Development of Knowledge of Animates and Inanimates in Infancy9. Conclusions: Applications, Generalizations, Challenges, and a Call to ActionReferencesIndex

The freshest approach to child development since Piaget's monumental works nearly a century ago.