Constance Milbrath

Cynthia Lightfoot

This interdisciplinary volume explores art, its development, and its role in the construction of knowledge. Presenting theory and research on artistic development as a cultural and creative endeavor, contributors examine the origins of human art during the Paleolithic cultural revolution, as part of a modern cultural transformation, in the growth of a creative artist, and in developing children. Target chapters expressing the disciplinary perspectives of psychology, archaeology, communications, education, and the performing arts are followed by commentaries from internationally acclaimed scholars of human development. Part 1 explores how cultures harness and exploit the arts to give expression to values, social practices, and traditions. This section traces the emergence of new art forms that arose during social unrest, including the symbolization of spiritual beliefs expressed on the walls of Paleolithic caves, and the racial identity and cultural values expressed in the media of the hip-hop generation. Part 2 examines the journeys of a composer and a group of students to highlight the process of becoming an artist and the role education plays in its development. The book concludes with a focus on the development of aesthetic appreciation and artistic activity in childhood and adolescence, including, for example, how a child’s developing theory of mind affects appreciation for the arts, and how developing empathy and emotional regulation contribute to the cognitive and affective underpinnings of acting in adolescence. As a whole contributors explore the developmental, sociocultural, and evolutionary processes that make the creation and experience of art possible. Intended for researchers and advanced students in both human development and the arts, this book will also serve as a textbook for advanced courses on psychology and the arts and/or special topics courses in cognitive and/or human development.

Art and Human Development

Sue Taylor Parker

Jonas Langer

Based on the Annual Symposium of the Jean Piaget Society, Biology and Knowledge Revisited focuses on the classic issue of the relationship between nature and nurture in cognitive and linguistic development, and their neurological substrates. Contributors trace the history of ideas concerning the relationship between evolution and development, and bring powerful new conceptual systems and research data to bear on understanding the problem of experience-contingent brain development and evolution. They focus on processes of phenotype construction - which fill the gap between genes and behavior - and demonstrate that evolutionary psychological models of innate mental modules are incompatible with what is known about these processes. This book presents exciting new approaches to the development and evolution of cognitive and linguistic abilities. Returning to the broad evolutionary theme of a previous meeting, the symposium focused on specifically constructivist approaches to neurogenesis and language acquisition, and their evolution. It was organized around ideas about the relationship between development and evolution raised in Piaget's books. Research in this arena has yielded cutting-edge insight into behavioral influences on brain plasticity. Two of its subthemes run throughout - a critique of modularity models popular among evolutionary psychologies and the prescient yet flawed nature of Piaget's critique of the modern synthesis of evolution. As a result, Biology and Knowledge Revisited is intended for developmental psychologists, psycholinguists, biological anthropologists, evolutionary psychologists, and philosophers of science.

From Neurogenesis to Psychogenesis

Biology and Knowledge Revisited

This book presents several original studies of artistically talented children and their less-talented peers. The focus is on the spontaneous drawings children produce and on the types of compositions children generate when given materials to compose. Milbrath's model of artistic talent attributes individual differences to the figurative abilities of talented children, and her theory is richly supported by original examples of children's artwork.

Comparative Studies of Talent

Patterns of Artistic Development in Children

Hanns M Trautner

This volume presents an innovative approach to the psychological study of children’s developing conceptions of pictures, drawings, and art.It brings together current theory and research on children’s developing understanding and production of pictures, drawings, and art. With contributions from leading international scholars, it is the first book to focus explicitly on children’s knowledge and interpretations of pictorial representations, including their understanding of the roles of the artist and the viewer. It addresses what children of different ages know about the nature of pictures as representations of the world, as intentional communications conceived of by artists, and as esthetic objects, as well as what children of different ages understand about the different ways to depict objects and scenes. The contributions discuss how children know what for them or for others is easy or difficult to draw, what they know about the strategies or aids for making a “good” drawing, the kinds of drawings and art they prefer, as well as their basis for making esthetic judgments and evaluating the quality of a drawing and individual style.Knowledge of how children think about pictures and of their metacognitive abilities will deepen our understanding of the drawings they produce and, more importantly, provide valuable insights into children’s comprehension of the many forms of graphic representation that are part of contemporary culture.

Constance Milbrath

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