Search results for ""Author Jerome Kagan""

Hay quienes todavía creen que nuestras características psicológicas se deben fundamentalmente a nuestros genes; hay quienes, por el contrario, piensan que estamos predominantemente conformados por el ambiente en que crecemos. A unos y a otros está dirigido este libro, en el que Jerome Kagan, profesor emérito de Psicología en la Universidad de Harvard, muestra de qué modo la psicología humana está definida por la biología y por el medio ambiente. Apoyándose en décadas de investigación, el profesor Kagan describe los rasgos de temperamento que subyacen a nuestros modos de actuar y responde preguntas tales como: de qué modo el temperamento con que nacemos afectará al resto de nuestras vidas? Estamos determinados desde el nacimiento a ser optimistas o pesimistas? El autor muestra así de qué modo los genes, el género, la cultura y el azar interactúan con el temperamento e influyen sobre la personalidad.Impulsada por las nuevas herramientas provistas por las neurociencias y la psicología

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We have seen these children—the shy and the sociable, the cautious and the daring—and wondered what makes one avoid new experience and another avidly pursue it. At the crux of the issue surrounding the contribution of nature to development is the study that Jerome Kagan and his colleagues have been conducting for more than two decades. In The Long Shadow of Temperament, Kagan and Nancy Snidman summarize the results of this unique inquiry into human temperaments, one of the best-known longitudinal studies in developmental psychology. These results reveal how deeply certain fundamental temperamental biases can be preserved over development.Identifying two extreme temperamental types—inhibited and uninhibited in childhood, and high-reactive and low-reactive in very young babies—Kagan and his colleagues returned to these children as adolescents. Surprisingly, one of the temperaments revealed in infancy predicted a cautious, fearful personality in early childhood and a dour mood in adolescence. The other bias predicted a bold childhood personality and an exuberant, sanguine mood in adolescence. These personalities were matched by different biological properties. In a masterly summary of their wide-ranging exploration, Kagan and Snidman conclude that these two temperaments are the result of inherited biologies probably rooted in the differential excitability of particular brain structures. Though the authors appreciate that temperamental tendencies can be modified by experience, this compelling work—an empirical and conceptual tour-de-force—shows how long the shadow of temperament is cast over psychological development.

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Developing Cultures: Essays on Cultural Change is a collection of 21 expert essays on the institutions that transmit cultural values from generation to generation. The essays are an outgrowth of a research project begun by Samuel Huntington and Larry Harrison in their widely discussed book Culture Matters the goal of which is guidelines for cultural change that can accelerate development in the Third World. The essays in this volume cover child rearing, several aspects of education, the world's major religions, the media, political leadership, and development projects.The book is companion volume to Developing Cultures: CaseStudies.(0415952808).

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"The Emergence of Morality in Young Children is one of very few scholarly books concerning the development of moral tendencies in the early years. In its pages, a diverse group of eminent social and behavioral scientists address this fascinating topic and struggle with issues of inquiry that have persistently plagued this field."—Nancy Eisenberg, Harvard Educational Review"This is a welcome and immensely provocative book. For those of us who favor ethical theorizing done in close proximity to psychology and anthropology, it provides new and illuminating theory and research relevant to perennial debates about the origins of moral sense, its psychological organization, and the objectivity and unity of the moral."—Owen Flanagan, EthicsThe contributors are Augusto Blasi, Lawrence Blum, Judy Dunn, M. Ann Easterbrooks, Carolyn Pope Edwards, Robert Emde, Carol Gilligan, Charles C. Helwig, William F. Johnson, Jerome Kagan, Melanie Killen, Sharon Lamb, Manamohan Mahapatra, Joan G. Miller, Edward Mueller, Richard A. Shweder, Catherine Snow, Elliot Turiel, and Grant Wiggins.

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How malleable is human nature? Can an individual really change in meaningful ways? Or, are there immutable limits on the possibilities of human growth set in place by the genes and by the early experiences of childhood? These are questions which touch our deepest political and personal concerns; and they have long been a matter of fierce debate in the behavioral sciences.Constancy and Change in Human Development takes a thorough inventory of the growing body of research which now bears upon these questions. Editors Brim and Kagan have assembled an outstanding group of specialists in human growth and commissioned them to assess questions of change and continuity in physical, mental, and emotional development throughout the life span. Beginning with three general chapters which place the ideas of continuity and discontinuity in historical and philosophical perspective, the book moves across a broad spectrum of developmental issues, ranging from the basic adaptability of the human central nervous system to the effects of social institutions which seek to promote individual change. There are chapters on physical growth, health, cognitive development, personality, social attitudes and beliefs, occupational careers, psychosis, and criminal behavior. Throughout these chapters, the recurring question is whether development can be seen as a continuous process in which early stages reliably predict subsequent events, or whether instead there are sharp discontinuities which render individual development essentially unpredictable. The variety and richness of the answers to this question provide a summary of human development which is unparalleled in any other single volume.

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This accessible book draws on unique evidence from oral histories and little-known archive material to shed new light on the working relationships which led to John Bowlby’s shift from psychoanalysis to ethology as a frame of reference – and ultimately to the development of attachment theory. A unique exploration of the origins of Bowlby’s ideas and the critical transformation in his thinking – offers an alternative to standard accounts of the origin of attachment theory Explores the significance of Bowlby’s influential working relationships with Robert Hinde, Harry Harlow, James Robertson and Mary Ainsworth Provides students, academics, and practitioners with clear insights into the development of attachment theory Accessible to general readers interested in psychology and psychoanalysis

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Temperament has been a central element of the on-going effort to describe the distinctiveness of persons at every stage of development. Many researchers have examined the relations of temperament to emotions, behavior, and adjustment generally. Fewer studies have focused primarily on the nature and structure of temperament, however, and even fewer have examined the developmental course of temperament. This Monograph reports a significant exception. The authors undertook theoretically relevant behavioral, biological, and self-report assessments of a sample of 14-to-17 year olds who had been classified into one of four temperamental groups at 4 months of age. Infant temperamental categories were based on observed behavior to a battery of unfamiliar stimuli. The infants classified as high reactive (20 percent of the sample) displayed vigorous motor activity and frequent crying. Those classified as low reactive (40 percent) displayed minimal motor activity and crying. About 25 percent of the infants, called distressed, showed minimal motor activity but cried frequently, and 10 percent, characterized by vigorous motoricity but little crying, were called aroused. Previous evaluations of these children at 14 and 21 months, and 4, 7, and 11 years had revealed that those children initially classified as high reactive were most likely to be avoidant of unfamiliar events at the early ages and emotionally subdued, cautious, and wary of new situations at the later ages. By contrast, initially low-reactive children had been the least avoidant of unfamiliarity in the second year and most emotionally spontaneous and sociable at the later ages. At age 11 years, assessments also had revealed that initially high-reactive children were more likely than the low-reactive participants to display right hemisphere activation in the EEG, a larger evoked potential from the inferior colliculus, larger event related waveforms to discrepant scenes, and greater sympathetic tone in the cardiovascular system. In the follow-up of these individuals reported here, adolescents (14-17 years of age) who had been classified as high reactive in infancy were more likely than initially low reactive participants to display sympathetic tone in the cardiovascular system, to combine a fast latency with a large magnitude of the evoked potential from the inferior colliculus, and to show shallower habituation of the event-related potential to discrepant visual events. Moreover, compared to their low-reactive agemates, initially high reactive adolescents more often reported being subdued in unfamiliar situations, experiencing a dour mood and anxiety over the future, and being religious. An important finding is that behavior and biology were more clearly dissociated in adolescence than at earlier ages. However, infant temperamental category at 4 months remained a powerful predictor of behavior in adolescence, suggesting that the features that characterize the two temperamental biases by initially high- and low-reactive are not completely malleable to the profound effects of brain growth and experience.

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