Developmental Psychology : Childhood and Adolescence

EXCELLENT SELLER. GREAT COMMUNICATION. ITEM ARRIVED RIGHT ON TIME. WOULD BUY OVER AND OVER AGAIN! THANK YOU!

The book is great, covers all the fundamentals and goes into some detail. Great book for a class in child development or child/adolescent developmental psychology. Great visuals, easy to read text, I mean it's a textbook. Overall it's great, but I didn't buy it for anything other than to have to get it for class.

I wrote the instructor's test bank for the 2001 Sixth edition of the Shaffer text book: 504 pages of multiple choice and essay test questions, supplied to faculty who teach with the book. Shaffer's book is organized as a "topically arranged" textbook. About half the child psych textbooks are topically arranged ---- each chapter has a topic, and all age levels are considered. This arrangement allows greater in-depth coverage opf the ,material than the chronological arrangement of half the titles in this area. The advantage of the chronological arrangement is that there is better awareness of the kids getting older as the semester progresses. Today, I use both arrangements, with a topical book in the fall semester and a chronological book in the spring semester. I did NOT adopt the Shaffer 6/e book as my topical book: It is for an upper division course in child psychology, and noticeably harder than the chronological text I have adopted. I had to select a lower-division topical book instead (Seigler, DeLoach, & Eisenberg: How Children Develop, 1/e). But I have several copies of the Shaffer book on reserve at the library, for extra credit testing. Shaffer's book is advanced and students will need to read it slowly and carefully. BEST CHAPTER is Ch. 12: The Self & Social Cognition.. My main criticism of the Shaffer book is that 99% of the narrative is identical between the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions. When writing the 6/e Test Bank, I told the editor that the ONLY ORIGINALITY in the entire Sixth Edition project was my Test Bank (90% fresh questions); the book, study guide, and Instructor's manual were 99% identical to the previous edition. ----- Psychology professor, Gallup NM

This is an awesome book. It's well-written in everyday language that's easy to understand, has tons of interesting pictures and "boxes" (applications of the concepts to real life), and you can start reading anywhere in the book and be able to understand the concepts. In other words, you can jump into the book anywhere; you don't need to read it in order. If you're taking a psych class (even one that doesn't require this textbook), this is a great supplement, and even has great self-quizzes at the ends of the chapters, along with the answers in the back. BUY THIS BOOK!

The first couple of chapters are a bit boring and wordy, but then it gets more engaging. Actually the material is all interesting, but could have been condensed about 4 times, then the book would weigh a lot less and teach a lot more. I think that if this is at least someone's second phych course, they would benefit more from a smaller text that taught the same info with fewer words. Unfortunately, most intro undergraduate texts are ridiculously bulky for no good reason, so in comparison this one is quite good.