Table of Contents (TOC)
Dr Jay Seitz
Human Lifespan Development…Backwards
Retracing the Stages of Life (Ontogeny) from the End to the Beginning
- Introduction
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed – What are some useful ideas from the work of Paulo Freire?
- Students are not containers to fill up with knowledge. What Freire calls the “banking method of education.”
- Dialogue is essential to education. Learning, at its core, is dialogical and creative.
- Shortcomings of Texts in Human Development
- Neoteny and Evolutionary Psychology
- Neurodiversity
- Epilogue: Intelligence Augmentation and Beyond: What is its Role in Human Development?
Chapter 1: Late Adulthood (70 and above)
Chronic diseases of aging that shorten lifespan
- Why do we age?
- Aging and longevity
- Neurodegenerative diseases and disorders
- Neurocognitive disorders
Aging and work
- Employment vs. retirement
- Cognition and memory
Keeping the mind active vs. cognitive decline
- Intelligence, creativity, and wisdom
- Behavioral health
Sociality in later life
- Well-being and emotion
- Friends, siblings, marriage, and same-sex partnerships
Chapter 2: Middle Adulthood (40 – 70 years)
- Work vs. leisure
- Relationships in midlife
- Occupational challenges
- Gender, ethnicity, and discrimination
Chapter 3: Young Adulthood (21 – 40 years)
- Emerging adulthood
- Who do you want to be?
- Physical development and health
- Intelligence in life and work: What is it?
Chapter 4: Adolescence (12 – 21 years)
- Neurodevelopmental disorders and disease
- Dynamic testing
- Learning disorders: Dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia
- Learning how to read
- Functional illiteracy
- Autism spectrum disorders (ASD)
- Developmental motor disorders
- Tic disorders
- Traumatic brain injuries (TBI)
- Specific language impairments
- Neurotoxicants
- Genetic disorders
- Physical activity and mental health
- Peers and understanding others
- Romantic relationships and sexuality
- Identity and self-esteem
- Behavioral health
Chapter 5: Childhood (2 – 12 years)
- Mind and culture: Luria, Vygotsky, and Piaget
- Emergence of the creative mind: The role of metaphorical thought (i.e., thinking of one thing in terms of another)
- The centrality of schooling
- Emotions and interactions with others
- Lessons from developmental cognitive neuroscience: Is there evidence for unconscious repression of unpleasant and traumatic memories in infancy and early childhood?
- Childhood trauma versus attachment
- Psychological resilience
Chapter 6: Infancy (0 – 2 years)
- Conceptual primitives
- Biological foundations
- Brain development
- The external and internal (i.e., proprioception) senses
- Means for exploring the world
- The embodied mind
- Perceptual, motor, and physical development
- Becoming self-aware: Theory of mind
- Language, thought, creativity, and freedom
- The emergence of language and thought
- Language development
- Development of gesture
- Using symbols: The symbolic stage
- Numerical understanding and development
- The roots of consciousness
- Infant temperament
- Development of affect
- Sensorimotor development
- Using symbols: The symbolic stage
- Neurodevelopmental disorders
- Emerging sociality: Development of the attachment bond
- Prenatal, Perinatal, and Postnatal Development
