Developmental Cascades

Developmental Cascades proposes a new framework for understanding development by arguing that change can be explained in terms of the events that occur at one point in development, which set the stage or cause a ripple effect for the emergence or development of different abilities, functions, or behavior at another point in time. This framework is applied in detail to three domains within infant cognitive development--namely, looking behavior, object representations, and concepts for animacy.

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 of
infant 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 Hard
2. Developmental Mechanisms: Eliminating the Dichotomy
3. The "Humpty-Dumpty Problem" In the Study of Development
4. The Role of Constraints in Development
5. Developmental Cascades: A New Framework to Understand Change
6. The Development of Looking Behavior in Infancy
7. Cascades and Object Knowledge
8. The Development of Knowledge of Animates and Inanimates in Infancy
9. Conclusions: Applications, Generalizations, Challenges, and a Call to Action
References
Index