There were no apparent grammatical errors that I detected. I did see a few minor typos or edits to be made but no significant grammar errors. Socialization and Personality throughout the Life Span: An Examination of Contemporary Psychological Approaches The book does well on the topics it covers. However, the topics covered are more a selection than anything else. For instance, physical development is left out entirely, while the text has a thorough and sophisticated coverage of theories of development and research methods. For instance, there is thorough and modern coverage of contextual theories of development where many texts limit themselves to classical theories like Erikson. The text has neither index or glossary. Further examples: Unit 5 on Early Childhood covers self-regulation and cognitive development. Both are well-described, but social-emotional development and physical development (as noted earlier) are left by the wayside.

Lifelong development means that development is not completed in infancy or childhood or at any specific age; it encompasses the entire lifespan, from conception to death. The study of development traditionally focused almost exclusively on the changes occurring from conception to adolescence and the gradual decline in old age; it was believed that the five or six decades after adolescence yielded little to no developmental change at all. The current view reflects the possibility that specific changes in development can occur later in life, without having been established at birth. The early events of one’s childhood can be transformed by later events in one’s life. This belief clearly emphasizes that all stages of the lifespan contribute to the regulation of the nature of human development. Naturalistic observations involve observing behavior in its natural context. A developmental psychologist might observe how children behave on a playground, at a daycare center, or in the child’s own home. While this research approach provides a glimpse into how children behave in their natural settings, researchers have very little control over the types and/or frequencies of displayed behavior. The text is pretty modular. The only issue is that it comes as a single PDF document, which leaves the student to "jump" between sections. An instructor can't just post a link to a section, though the Table of Contents does make navigation simple.Erik Erikson introduced the Psychosocial Theory of Development as a modification of Sigmund Freud's Psychosexual Theory. He proposed that social connection throughout the lifespan fosters development. According to Erikson, each stage in life consists of certain tasks that must be completed, and the inability to do so elicits feelings of insufficiency. The book has a consistent structure, beginning with the overall themes of the course and an introduction to research methods, then following each stage of human development. After the chapter on infancy, a chapter on parenting is included. This unit feels out of place and represents a slight departure from the overall consistent structure of the text. What is meant by the word “context”? It means that we are influenced by when and where we live. Our actions, beliefs, and values are a response to the circumstances surrounding us. Sternberg describes contextual intelligence as the ability to understand what is called for in a situation (Sternberg, 1996). The key here is to understand that behaviors, motivations, emotions, and choices are all part of a bigger picture. Our concerns are such because of who we are socially, where we live, and when we live; they are part of a social climate and set of realities that surround us. Important social factors include cohort, social class, gender, race, ethnicity, and age. Let’s begin by exploring two of these: cohort and social class.

During a child's life, maturation also involves learning and body movements, including gross and fine motor skills. Maturation is also essential in learning as certain maturity levels indicate readiness to acquire new knowledge and skills. Assimilation and Accommodation

Development is contextual

The text maintains cultural relevance through all ten units. This is evidenced through the variety of videos, cultural examples, and research findings included in both the main sections of the text, as well as the supplementary materials. What's here is accurate. The authors take a contextual perspective to development which results in consideration of many influences on development, which makes it less biased at least. (It's impossible to make an unbiased text.) However, the list of topics is limited as I noted above.

All areas of the text follow similar formatting, design, and depth of information - making the text flow with consistency and resulting in ease of use and navigation.Like Freud and Erikson, Piaget thought development unfolds in a series of stages approximately associated with age ranges. He proposed a theory of cognitive development that unfolds in four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational ( [link]). Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development Age (years) Extending on the premise of multidirectionality, Baltes also argued that development is influenced by the “joint expression of features of growth (gain) and decline (loss)” [1] This relation between developmental gains and losses occurs in a direction to selectively optimize particular capacities. This requires the sacrificing of other functions, a process known as selective optimization with compensation. According to the process of selective optimization, individuals prioritize particular functions above others, reducing the adaptive capacity of particulars for specialization and improved efficacy of other modalities.