Child Psychology: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #410

by Usha Goswami

This Very Short Introduction provides an up-to-date, authoritative, and accessible guide to modern child psychology, from birth to early adolescence. Beginning with infancy, Usha Goswami considers the process of attachment and bonding, showing how secure attachments enable the development of self-understanding. Exploring childhood learning, ranging from aspects of language and thinking to cognitive reasoning, Goswami looks at how babies and toddlers develop an understanding of the physical, biological, and social worlds, and develop complex abilities like language and morality.
Demonstrating how learning is shaped by the environments surrounding the child; at home, school, with peers, and in wider society, Goswami emphasizes the importance of childhood friendships and siblings for psychological development. Introducing the key theories in child psychology, Goswami explains why children develop as they do and how society can further optimize their development through the adolescent years.
ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Parenting, Education, Child Psychology, Childrens, Ebooks

160 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2014

Reviews

[Cephalopodophil. · Rating 4 out of 5]

ซื้อจากงานหนังสือเพราะสนใจพัฒนาการเด็กในวรรณกรรม แต่พออ่านไปอ่านมากลับชอบการทดลองต่างๆ ที่ใช้ความรู้หลายด้าน เช่น ประสาทวิทยา ภาษาศาสตร์ วิวัฒนาการ​ ฯลฯ เพื่อศึกษาพัฒนาการเด็กด้านต่างๆ ที่เกี่ยวกับความรู้สึก เช่น การรู้เจตนา การรู้ผิดชอบชั่วดี ความเห็นอกเห็นใจ น่าจะใช้เป็นข้อมูลเพื่อศึกษาประเด็นกฎหมายกับประสาทวิทยาศาสตร์ได้ดี เพราะพัฒนาการของเด็กช่วงแรกๆ เป็นช่วงก่อนเข้าสู่โลกของภาษา

[Thanawat · Rating 4 out of 5]

อ่านแล้ว Motivate มาก

ผู้เขียนทำออกมาได้ดีมากในส่วนที่แสดงให้เห็นว่าอะไรคือสิ่งที่หล่อหลอมทารกคนหนึ่งให้เติบโตขึ้นมาเป็นผู้ใหญ่ ผ่านการยกตัวอย่างด้วยงานวิจัยด้านจิตวิทยา
เล่างานวิจัยด้วยภาษาเรียบง่ายไม่เป็นวิชาการมากนัก พร้อมทั้งอธิบายผลและการประยุกต์ มาสร้างความเข้าใจได้อย่างดี
เรียกได้ว่า แม้จะออกเป็นแนววิชาการหน่อยๆ แต่ภาษาที่ใช้ ไม่ได้มีคำเชิงเทคนิคมา bombard ผู้อ่านมากนัก

โครงสร้างหนังสืออ่านดูแล้วรู้สึกว่าแบ่งออกได้เป็นสองส่วน
ส่วนแรกจะเล่าถึงศักยภาพ และสิ่งที่ช่วยหล่อหลอมเด็กทารกจนถึงวัยอนุบาลให้ฟังอย่างน่าสนใจ ค่อนข้างอ่านได้ไหลลื่น สนุก และที่สำคัญคือเปิดหูเปิดตาและ motivate ในเรื่องของการเลี้ยงดูเด็กอย่างมาก
ส่วนที่สองนี่ค่อนข้างจะเล่าถึงพื้นฐานทางจิตวิทยา และประสาทวิทยาที่อยู่เบื้องหลังการพัฒนาการของเด็กคนหนึ่งๆ ซึ่งส่วนนี้เรียกว่าเป็นวิชาการค่อนข้างมาก ต้องใช้สมาธิในการอ่านจริงๆ

ย้ำอีกรอบว่าหนังสือเล่มนี้ไม่ใช่ "How-to เลี้ยงลูกหลาน หนึ่ง-สอง-สาม-สี่”
แต่การอ่านหนังสือเล่มนี้มันให้ความรู้สึกตระหนักถึง “สิ่งสำคัญ” และ “ช่วงเวลาสำคัญ (Golden period)” ที่เราจะมอบให้ทารกหรือเด็กคนหนึ่งๆ เพื่อที่จะช่วยให้เขา “เติบโต” อย่างเต็มศักยภาพ อยู่ในสังคมได้อย่างดี
อ่านแล้วได้แรงบันดาลใจ และแน่นอนว่าหนังสือเล่มนี้เหมาะสำหรับการอ่านซ้ำๆ เพื่อที่จะฝัง concept และ attitude ลงในความทรงจำ

[Tso William · Rating 4 out of 5]

This very short to introduction to child psychology is effectively also a very short introduction to parenting. A parent might view children being intentionally naughty when they throw a toy down from the table or squeeze juice to the ground from a juice packet but little they know that the children might be acting like scientist. They are testing if things fall down as the force of gravity pull them down and so they throw the toy. They are thinking using how much force can squeeze liquid out and so they squeeze the juice packet.

Incidentally, the parent who attributes hostile intention to the children (i.e. the children being intentionally naughty) will influence the children to adopt the same approach to view other people, i.e. attributing them hostile intentions as well. What is otherwise a neutral act (e.g. getting hit by another child, so that your tray of food falls) might be interpreted by the children as a hostile act (that child wishes to hurt me, c.f. that child was careless).

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting! This was for university students.

[Shikha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recommended for new and young parents/ caretakers who are curious about realizing their role in developing their child’s cognitive abilities. The book is a compilation of research papers (as a result of various experiments globally) which, when read as a narrative or a guidebook will answer the following questions:

· Is it ok to talk to my child in more than one language?
· How should new information be fed to an infant/ toddler?
· How normal are my child’s responses and behaviors towards her surroundings?
· When is a good time to teach my child how to read and write?
· How strong is my child’s language spong at different ages (0-10)?

Happy reading!

[Roop Gill Axelsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does what it says on the tin: it’s a very short introduction to child psychology. Goswani does a good job of selecting the most important / most interesting experiments in the literature on child psychology - but each chapter becomes more technically heavy than the last.

The first half of the book has some relevant insights for new parents / expecting parents who want a technical explanation for the recommended best practices on child-rearing.

[Nuttawat Kalapat · Rating 4 out of 5]

งานวิชาการแหละ

ชุดความรู้ฉบับพกพา ของbook scape ดีทุกเล่มครับ ลึกกว่าที่คิด ช่วงทฤษฏีท้ายๆ คืออ่านยากโคตรๆ ช่วงเกริ่นกับให้ข้อมูลนี่อ่านถือว่าไม่ยาก

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some pretty interesting facts, but I think the “very short introduction” format wasn’t right for me. I would have preferred merely “short,” or perhaps “medium.” Some of the claims included brief descriptions of studies to back up those claims, but many others were simply stated without argument. Without knowing the evidence backing up a statement, I don’t feel confident I have a precise understanding of the statement, let alone confidence the statement is well founded. This could have been mitigated by good citations. The book did include references, but without any link indicating which claims were supported by which references. Also many of the references were themselves secondary sources.

Reading this after The Nurture Assumption also gave me a good understanding of the methods The Nurture Assumption criticizes. Indeed, this book assumed without question that parenting has a huge effect on children’s outcomes, and relied heavily on correlational evidence without attempts to control for genetics. It also stated that “The environment experienced by the infant and child will have a far bigger impact on psychological development than genes.” It’s not clear in what sense this might be true or why Goswami believes it. For example, the big five personality traits are roughly 40-60% heritable.

[George Baca · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is difficult to describe succinctly, in 124 pages, such a rich subject as developmental psychology. However, Professor Goswami does a fairly good job at doing so. The three stars, therefore, comment on the fact that it is a short book packed with excessive information. The content is dense, heavily technical and in places not extrapolated to the degree required to allow for efficient comprehension. Thus, the three stars do not reflect the ability of the writer but rather the concept of the series itself. This is my second book from the "Very Short Introduction" series and while they are comprehensive and indeed introductory the format in which it is written is often unengaging due to the nature of the delivery that is necessitated by the length of the book. It is dry. An introductory text should excite the reader to want to know more about the subject.

[Jonny Thomson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mean, yeah, it did mostly what I wanted. It's short and it's about child psychology.

It's great at selecting the more interesting studies and at not getting bogged down in the (often dull) practicalities of the experiments but gives you the takeaways.

The only reason to lose a star is that the latter sections do have a lot of common sense (but aware this will be subject to one's own prior knowledge) and also seem to reference only child psychology principles without referencing at all the experiments that proved them. Would like to examine those.

Would recommend for anyone wanting an overview and introduction to child psychology (it's especially good for parents/parents to be as the first 2/3 is essentially about what a 0-3yr old needs to flourish).

[Teechutha Netcharussaeng · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very short book indeed about children psychology. In fact, this is my first book that is so psychology-oriented. Kind of like an introduction to the psychology world, not just children psychology. Very scientific, and needs a bit time to digest as it is full of scientific terms. Maybe it's because I read the translated version, making the overall language structure so difficult to understand. Nonetheless, this book includes a lot of interesting topics about children development and the cause and effect of how a behavior or a skill is formed. 3-stars. Takes a lot of effort to comprehend, more like a long academic passage about psychology that you need to 'eat your vegetables' in order to get the good stuff. (For me, at least, being a multi-tasker I am.)

[Soha Seliem · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe this is a must have for every new parent to understand when and how their babies/toddlers develop mentally and psychologically. The book is a concise one, easy to follow with lots of experiments reported and examples given. It’s a quick read but very insightful. I like the “Very Short Introduction” series by Oxford press because it gives the reader a comprehensive yet summarized idea of different topics varying from “The Greeks” to “Existentialism” and many more. It’s a great way of knowing something about everything. The book is only 124 pages long but it’s rich with valuable information that I believe every new parent should be aware of.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got what I expected: a good overview of child psychology, citing some interesting studies. I liked the sections on creating positive learning environments, and why that matters. I also liked the sections on language, and on how asking children about past events affects how much they remember.

I dropped it a couple of stars because 1) it makes some dated assumptions about gender and primary care givers, and 2) I wasn't keen on the writing style (e.g. I found the overuse of starting sentences with "Indeed" a bit distracting).

[รพีพัฒน์ อิงคสิทธิ์ · Rating 4 out of 5]

สนุกดี อ่านคู่กับหนังสืออีเล่มนึง (ฺBringing Up Bebe) แล้วรู้สึกว่าไปด้วยกันได้ เพราะเนื้อหาบางส่วนคาบเกี่ยวกันแต่ในเล่มนี้จะอธิบายในเชิงวิชาการมากกว่า

งานวิชาการสไตล์จิตวิเคราะห์นี่น่ากลัวอยู่นิดหน่อย เพราะบางชิ้นก็ออกแนวคิดเองเออเองคล้ายๆ Data Mining แต่ก็พอจับภาพได้ว่าทารกและเด็กๆ มีความรู้ความเข้าใจโลกมากกว่าที่เราคิด แต่ส่วนตัวติดกับช่วงบทท้ายๆ ที่เน้นประสาทวิทยาเพราะรู้สึกว่ามันเทคนิคจ๋าและเต็มไปด้วยศัพท์อะไรก็ไม่รู้ที่ไม่ค่อยสร้างประโยชน์สักเท่าไหร่ เรียกว่าอ่านเข้าไปก็ไหลออกหูหมด (ฮา)

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this was phenomenally interesting, covering both state-of-the-art research on infant cognition and development as well as classical theories on child psychology with clarity and illustrative use of scientific experiments. It loses one star for the last third, which is too general and abstract. It also loses one star for being very short. Some may say that I cannot possibly be surprised or disappopinted by the book's brevity given the "Very short introduction" in the title, the very small size of the book, and all. But I'm ruthless like that.

[Aaronmac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because it is so short that it glosses over some findings of studies, I had lots of questions. But, because it’s so short it is an easy, focused read that helps you get a feel for the field. Also, I liked how the author’s last chapter is in theory so that you are not trying to integrate/ignore findings based on theory, but rather coming to an understanding of theory based on findings.

[Usfromdk · Rating 1 out of 5]

Close to two stars, but in the end I didn't think the book deserved the second star.

The book is not completely devoid of observations of interest, but the level of coverage was disappointingly low.

[Jesse Richards · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is pretty good, one of the better ones in this series. The problem is, it's not about Child Psychology, or at least not what I expected. It's Child Development. If they had just called it that, it would have been great.

[Sonic · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice intro full of safe generalizations.

[Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts off very interesting but gets rather technical by the end.

[Saranpong Chobtrong · Rating 4 out of 5]

เป็นหนังสือที่ดีเล่มหนึ่ง ทำให้เข้าใจมากขึ้นว่าเด็กเรียนรู้สิ่งต่างๆ ได้อย่างไร ทำให้เราคิดวิธีที่จะสอนหรือเล่นกับเค้าได้ถูกต้องมากขึ้น

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good starting point

[N · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bureaucratic mess. What would Hume say about a world where there is more sophistry and illusion in the empirical than the metaphysical.

[Karo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Super interessant aber omg ist das anstrengend zu lesen… zieht sich mega obwohl das Buch nicht so lang ist

[Nicola Poloni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un abisso di qualità rispetto ai testi di divulgazione a tema bambinesco che vengono attualmente proposti sui social e dai professionisti [vedi recensione successiva]

[Farah Sümeyye Tunç · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gelişim psikolojisini tekrar etmek için aldım. Canım bebekler 🥰💫

[Teresa Jolanta · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those interested in understanding a little bit more about how the brains of tiny humans work, this is a good read!

[Manoj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very insightful read. Something to get back to at various stages of a child's development.

- the most highly charged emotions situations that children experience usually involve other children. Children's growing understanding of beliefs, desires, and the intentions of other depends on the discussion of these highly charged situations with their families or other carers.
- Children develop various kinds of memory, and all are important for learning in school. These include:
-- Semantic memory (our generic, factual knowledge about the world)
-- episodic memory (our ability consciously to retrieve autobiographical happenings from the past)
-- implicit or procedural memory (such as habits and skills). There are clearly required to benefit from schooling, yet implicit memories, habits and skills can also be important.

- Personal experience is a very powerful determinant of how we apply logical reasoning in new situations. In fact, if they cannot verify for themselves that simple premises are true, unschooled adults will refuse to reason deductively about these premises.

[Emmett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise and fascinating introduction into child psychology, in simple but precise-enough languge. Babies and very young children seem to be the emphasis since more pages are devoted to early acquisition, learning and its relevant theories than the progression and strengthening of these processes, charting developments from dawn to bloom. The categories that Goswami divides this introduction into are very helpful - what babies already know and how they go on to learn about the outside world, social competency and the imagination, brain processes - as they present various aspects from which theories of the mind and education - and reflectively, the different ways which children extend their abilities and grow in understanding - can be considered.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this short book in 2 days of intermittent reading. I bought it a while ago but I have not got around to reading it. I have read the Very Short Introductions books on Autism and Education previously and I can do nothing but recommend them. The book is informative and easy to read with a good mix of academic and accessible language so the books are approachable to true novices to the subject. I have a limited knowledge of psychology but found the detailed explanations of experiments conducted by theorists interesting and easy to understand. I will recommend the books to others wanting a clear and informative introduction to a subject. The book also gives links to further books if you want to delve deeper into the world of child psychology.