The Psychology of Human Development

Abstract

although this is by no means the perfect text on developmental psychology, it does provide a useful addition to those already available. A comparatively large amount of direct developmental data is provided, largely in the form of graphs and tables and, while much of this is normative material, there are some useful longitudinal comparisons between different children showing principles of divergent development more clearly than is usual. The introductory chapter is rather philosophical and may make forbidding reading for some, but it is not representative of the difficulty-level of the subsequent chapters. One of the best of these deals with the development of linguistic skills, although it could be criticised for some omissions. However, any book on development must omit more than it includes in order to retain a reasonable size. Since this survey of development ranges from the pre-natal period to late adulthood, and the adult section takes up more than 30% of the book, the treatment is necessarily lacking in depth. It is a pity that a fair amount