Human Development from Early Childhood to Early Adulthood: Findings from a 20 Year Longitudinal Study

Data generated from longitudinal studies paint a rich and varied picture of development and allow researchers to understand more deeply how context and experience interact with stable characteristics of the developing person over time. This book represents an overview, description, and summary of a landmark longitudinal study of approximately 200 children, from the ages 3 to 23. The Munich Longitudinal study on the Ontogenesis of Individual Competencies (LOGIC) traced developmental pathways in cognitive, social, and motor domains from preschool to young adulthood in a sample of children who grew up during the 1980s and 1990s in and around Munich, Germany. This valuable study has generated a tremendous amount of data that have been reported in more than 150 empirical articles. This book is the second volume to provide a comprehensive look at the developmental issues in these domains examined in the study. The first volume traced development from ages 3 to 12. This volume continues the story, integrating these early findings with results from the next two developmental phases - adolescence (measurements at ages 13 and 18) and young adulthood (measurements at age 23). Each of the chapters provides a summary of the literature and answers the questions was development stable and was it possible to predict later variables from earlier ones. The topics covered include core variables reflecting basic cognitive and motor skills (intelligence, memory, motor skills), social-cognitive competencies (moral thinking, personality, self-concept), and school-related competencies (scientific reasoning, spelling, mathematics). Each author summarizes developmental trends within their specific domain, and addresses issues of individual development - its stability over time, and the extent to which earlier performance predicts later competencies. The size of the LOGIC sample allows comparison of subgroups and subgroup analyses, defined by early personality characteristics or educational track or adult socio-cognitive variables. This book will appeal to advanced students and researchers in developmental, educational, personality, and cognitive psychology as well as researchers in education since several chapters focus on topics relevant for these scholars (i.e., literacy development, educational context, mathematical reasoning).Bullock, Merry is the author of 'Human Development from Early Childhood to Early Adulthood: Findings from a 20 Year Longitudinal Study', published 2008 under ISBN 9780805861082 and ISBN 0805861084.