Child Development: A Topical Approach

The Big Picture of Child Development.

The exciting first edition of Child Development: A Topical Approach is arranged in a way that helps students to see the “big picture” of development across the entire span of childhood and adolescence. Offering a modular approach, this text provides a broad overview of the field of child development. It covers major topics such as physical development, cognitive development, and social and personality development.

Child Development captures the discipline of Child Development in a way that excites readers about the field and draws them into its way of looking at the world. The text is rich in examples and illustrates the applications that can be derived from the research and theory of child developmentalists.

MyPscyhLab is an integral part of the Feldman program. Key learning applications include, MyVirtualChild, MyPsychLab video series, and Flashcards.

This text is available in a variety of formats ― digital and print. Pearson offers its titles on the devices students love through Pearson’s MyLab products, CourseSmart, Amazon, and more. To learn more about our programs, pricing options and customization, click the Choices tab.

Teaching & Learning Experience

• Personalize Learning – MyPsychLab is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program. It helps students prepare for class and instructor gauge individual and class performance.
• Improve Critical Thinking -- Review, Check, and Apply Sections – Interspersed throughout each chapter are short recaps of the chapters’ main points, followed by questions designed to provoke mastery of the material and critical thinking.
• Engage Students– Many chapters include an interview with a person working in a field that uses the findings of child and adolescent development. Among those interviewed are a counselor for a treatment center serving teenagers confronting substance abuse, a childcare provider, a neonatal nurse, and a preschool teacher.
• Understand Diversity – “Developmental Diversity and Your Life” sections that highlight issues relevant to today’s multicultural society.
• Explore Research – “From Research to Practice” boxes describe current developmental research or research issues, applied to everyday problems.
• Support Instructors– All supplements were developed around the textbook’s carefully constructed learning objectives. 

Robert S. Feldman is Professor of Psychology and Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A recipient of the College Distinguished Teacher Award, he teaches psychology classes ranging in size from 15 to nearly 500 students. During the course of more than two decades as a college instructor, he has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses at Mount Holyoke College, Wesleyan University, and Virginia Commonwealth University in addition to the University of Massachusetts.

A Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, Professor Feldman received a B.A. with High Honors from Wesleyan University (and from which he received the Distinguished Alumni Award).  He has an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a winner of a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer award, and he has written more than 100 books, book chapters, and scientific articles.

Professor Feldman has edited Development of Nonverbal Behavior in Children and Applications of Nonverbal Behavioral Theory and Research, and co-edited Fundamentals of Nonverbal Behavior. He is also author of  Development Across the Life Span, Understanding Psychology, and P.O.W.E.R. Learning: Strategies for Success in College and Life. His books have been translated into a number of languages, including Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. His research interests include honesty and deception in everyday life, work that he described in The Liar in Your Life, a trade book.  His research has been supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Disabilities and Rehabilitation Research.

Professor Feldman loves music, is an enthusiastic pianist, and enjoys cooking and traveling. He has three children, two young grandsons, and he and his wife, a psychologist, live in western Massachusetts in a home overlooking the Holyoke mountain range.