What makes you the person you are today?How does a baby perceive the world?Is the person without love damaged forever?What can psychology tell us about the differences between the sexes? Discipline? Delinquency? Adolescent fads and fashions? Marriage and parenting? Ageing and later life?Developmental Psychology and You is a lively and accessible introduction to the psychology of human development. The authors, who all have extensive experience in teaching and research, have selected topics that will appeal to new students of this subject and have presented them in a way that demonstrates their relevance to everyday life.The fully revised second edition includes a new chapter on gender development and gender differences, while the material on adult life and growing older has been expanded. New material has also been added on:Developmental stagesCultural variationsEarly social interactionsThe measurement of intelligenceVygotsky's theory of cognitive development.As in the previous edition, the style and design of the text are accessible and user-friendly; key concepts are highlighted throughout, and each chapter contains objectives, exercises, self-assessment questions and recommendations for further reading. A glossary at the end defines all the technical terms.

Julia C Berryman is Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the School of Psychology and the Institute of Lifelong Learning at the University of Leicester. She has experience in teaching psychology at a variety of levels from adult education students to professional groups and undergraduates and postgraduates. She completed her first degree at the University of Aberdeen and her Ph.D.at the University of Leicester. She has researched and published widely in the fields of developmental psychology, sex and gender, and parenting and parenthood. Her publications include a number of textbooks including Psychology and You: An Informal Introduction (published in 1997) and books on more specialist topics. Her current research is on various aspects of parenthood and parenting and her work has included major longitudinal study of women's experience of pregnancy, birth and motherhood. She has frequently appeared on TV and is often interviewed on radio and in the press in connection with her research on parenthood.

Pamela K Smythehas been a researcher in the School of Psychology at Leicester University for the last decade. During this time she has also taught psychology at a number of levels, ranging from undergraduates and medical students to post-graduate and adult education students. Her teaching areas include developmental psychology, laterality, introductory statistics, health psychology and general psychology. Both here first degree and her Ph.D. were completed at Leicester University with the latter concerning aspects of phonological processing and handedness. Research interests and publications involve laterality of hand and brain, the processing of speech sounds and dyslexia.

Ann Taylor was educated in Suffolk and at the University of London, and has spent most of her working life at the University of Leicester, finishing her full-time career as Senior Lecturer and Head of Department. Principal teaching and research interests have been in cognitive psychology, language development and in particular the study of adult development and ageing. She has extensive teaching experience at all undergraduate levels and with students of all adult ages, and has co-authored a number of textbooks, both introductory and advanced. Early retirement has given her more time for writing, teaching and library research, other employment, charity work of various kinds, indulgence of her passions for music and the theatre (as performer and spectator) and family life.

Alexandra Lamont is currently a Lecturer in Psychology of Music at the Psychology Department at Keele University. She teaches across a broad range of different topics including musical development and education, music perception, and perceptual and cognitive development. She also teaches for the Open University as an associate lecturer on a Masters course in Child Development in Families, Schools and Society. She was formerly a lecturer in developmental psychology at the University of Leicester. Her research includes studies of infants' musical preferences and musical memories, children's cognitive understanding of music, music in the school curriculum, the effects of musical training and experience on children's development, and the ways that adults with different musical backgrounds listen to music in different styles.

Richard Joiner is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Bath. Formerly he was a Research Fellow in the Centre for Human Development and Learning at the Open University. He taught developmental psychology previously at Leicester University and the University of Hertfordshire to both undergraduates and post-graduates. He was also an associate lecturer at the Open University, where he taught child development to undergraduates. He is interested in children's use of communication technology. He is co-editor of ‘Rethinking collaborative learning'.