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\"The importance of high quality early childhood education is now universally recognized, and this quality crucially depends upon the practitioners who work with our young children, and their deep understanding of how children develop and learn. This book makes a vital contribution to this understanding, providing authoritative reviews of key areas of research in developmental psychology, and demonstrating how these can inform practice in early years educational settings.\" -- Publisher's information.

Bayesian statistical methods are becoming ever more popular in applied and fundamental research. In this study a gentle introduction to Bayesian analysis is provided. It is shown under what circumstances it is attractive to use Bayesian estimation, and how to interpret properly the results. First, the ingredients underlying Bayesian methods are introduced using a simplified example. Thereafter, the advantages and pitfalls of the specification of prior knowledge are discussed. To illustrate Bayesian methods explained in this study, in a second example a series of studies that examine the theoretical framework of dynamic interactionism are considered. In the Discussion the advantages and disadvantages of using Bayesian statistics are reviewed, and guidelines on how to report on Bayesian statistics are provided.

Every child is born into a community, a society with a culture, in which he or she will live, grow, and develop. Cultures lead to differences in children's development, but equally important, culture is an essential component of every child's psychological development. Child Development takes a chronological approach, from prenatal development to adolescence, in which social, cognitive, emotional, and physical aspects of development are interwoven. Author Martin J. Packer integrates cross-cultural examples from different parts of the world to illustrate how culture plays a constitutive role in children's development. This book includes an in-depth discussion of human evolution, the history of language, and the human lifespan, as well as the theoretical perspectives of scientific research on children's development -- Provided by the publisher.

Given that recent research on entrepreneurial behavior and success has established skill variety as a central human capital factor, researchers, educators, and policymakers have turned their interest to a deeper understanding of the formation of skill variety. Based on human capital theory and the competence growth approach in developmental psychology (highlighting long-term, age-appropriate, and cumulative skill-growth processes), we hypothesize that a broad, early variety orientation in adolescence is a developmental precursor of such entrepreneurial human capital in adulthood. This was confirmed in an analysis of prospective longitudinal data via structural equation modeling and serial mediation tests. We also find that an entrepreneurial constellation of personality traits, but not entrepreneurial parents, predicts early variety orientation, skill variety, and entrepreneurial intentions. By shedding new light on the long-term formation of entrepreneurial human capital, the results suggest that establishing and benefiting from an early variety orientation is not only an important developmental mechanism in entrepreneurial careers but gives those with an entrepreneurial personality an early head start in their vocational entrepreneurial development. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.Plain English SummaryHuman capital is important for entrepreneurship. In particular, a varied skill set enables entrepreneurs to tackle the various tasks of starting a new firm. However, no one is born with such a skill set; it develops over time. In this study, we explore the origins of a varied skill set and its development. We find that skill variety in adulthood has its roots in a varied set of interests among teenagers, such as having many hobbies or finding different school subjects important. This growth in skill variety is driven by an entrepreneurial personality. For prospective entrepreneurs, our research suggests that investing in a varied skill set pays off. The implication for research is to look at the developmental process of how people become entrepreneurs. The most important conclusion for policymakers and educators is that educational support programs should center around encouraging especially adolescents and young adults to engage in varied activities and teach varied skills instead of focusing on a narrow curriculum.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a context that might influence how people experience significant life events (such as marriage, job change, or relocation). In the present research, we argue that one important factor of how positively or negatively the pandemic influences the experience of significant life events is how much control people perceive in the situation. An online sample of N = 882 participants aged 18–82 years reported a significant life event that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants described whether the pandemic influenced the life event, to what extent they perceived control over the life event and how they experienced the life event in terms of valence (i.e., positively or negatively). The results showed that the self-reported pandemic influence was significantly associated with the life-event experience. Furthermore, perceived control partly mediated this association. The results persisted even after controlling for the age of the participants. The present research underscores the important role of control for experiencing significant life events in challenging times such as during the pandemic.

Drawing on philosophy, the history of psychology and the natural sciences, this book proposes a new theoretical foundation for the psychology of the life course. It features the study of unique individual life courses in their social and cultural environment, combining the perspectives of developmental and sociocultural psychology, psychotherapy, learning sciences and geronto-psychology. In particular, the book highlights semiotic processes, specific to human development, that allow us to draw upon past experiences, to choose among alternatives and to plan our futures. Imagination is an important outcome of semiotic processes and enables us to deal with daily constraints and transitions, and promotes the transformation of social representation and symbolic systems - giving each person a unique style, or 'melody', of living. The book concludes by questioning the methodology and epistemology of current life course studies.