Originally proposed in 1975, the transactional model has become central to understanding the interplay of nature and nurture in explaining the development of positive and negative outcomes for children. Although scientists have long acknowledged that nature and nurture work together in producing positive or negative developmental outcomes, such cooperation has been difficult to demonstrate because of inadequate conceptual models, experimental designs or statistical methodologies. This book documents the state-of-the-art research in developmental psychology for overcoming these inadequacies, and present new ideas for future work.
The book is divided into five parts. Part One introduces the transactional model and designs for transactional research. Parts Two and Three focus on the predictive power of the transactional model and the many social settings that contribute to child progress. Part Two specifically examines the relations between infants and children and their parents, focusing on the relationship between child characteristics and behaviors and parents' child-rearing beliefs and behavior. Part Three broadens the perspective on child development to include the effects of the interplay among children and parents, neighborhood, school, ethnic, and socioeconomic environments. Parts Four and Five discuss new directions in transactional psychology and examine the idea of the transaction itself.
Arnold Sameroff, PhD, a developmental psychologist, is currently professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, where he is also chair of the Developmental Psychology Graduate Training Program and director of the Development and Mental Health Research Program at the Center for Human Growth and Development.
His influential theoretical work on ecological transactional models of development has helped to move researchers to more dynamic, system-based research efforts for understanding healthy child development, and his research on environmental risk and promotive factors has fostered a more comprehensive understanding of what is necessary to improve the cognitive and social–emotional welfare of children. Among the high-risk groups he is currently studying are infants with physiologic regulatory problems, children with depressed parents, adolescents living in low-resource neighborhoods, and adults reared in families with parental mental illness.
He has published numerous research articles and 12 books and monographs, including The Five to Seven Year Shift: The Age of Reason and Responsibility; Handbook of Developmental Psychopathology; Treating Early Relationship Problems: Infant, Parent, and Interaction Therapies; and, with Sheryl Olson, the forthcoming Regulatory Processes in the Development of Behavior Problems: Biological, Behavioral, and Social–Ecological Interactions.
Among his honors are the Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award from the Society for Research in Child Development and the G. Stanley Hall Award from Division 7 (Developmental Psychology) of the American Psychological Association. He is former president of Division 7 of the American Psychological Association and the International Society for Infant Studies and is current president of the Society for Research in Child Development.
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