The process of aging is not a steady decline; there is in every individual the potential for continuous growth and maturation through adulthood well into old age. (JD)

Describes the developmental progression from innate preferences to strong favorites to thoughtful choices in children from infancy through preschool and kindergarten. Offers suggestions at each age level for helping children develop, explore, and even temper their likes and dislikes. (HTH)

Introduces this theme issue that explores the nature of adolescence and the positive psychology movement that focuses on positive aspects of adolescent development. Articles in this collection provide a window into the exploration of youth strengths. (SLD)

Self-directed learning has been seen as an individual learning strategy focused on personal growth. A literature review indicates that it has interdependent and collective aspects that are consistent with those of learning organizations, making self-directed learning an effective human resource development strategy. (Contains 17 references.) (SK)

Suggests behavioral criteria that can be used for assessing the status of self-concept and ego development in Erikson's last three psychosocial stages. Presents three tables of different behavioral expressions, each providing examples of possible behaviors and implicit attitudes related to positive and negative ego resolutions associated with last…

Examined factors that affect Asian-American individual's choice of identification with Asian-American and lesbian or homosexual identity in 19 Asian-American lesbians and 16 Asian-American homosexual men. Results indicated most of the respondents identified more strongly with their homosexual identities than with their Asian-American identities.…

A Career Project involves both life tasks and personal themes. Pursuing a project yields accomplishments with implications for future projects; cultivates personal traits, virtues, or skills; helps integrate parts into a whole; and transforms activities into ends in themselves. (SK)

Describes Campbell Development Surveys, integrated battery of five surveys covering organizational satisfaction, leadership characteristics, interests and skills, team morale, and community life. Notes that all surveys have common set of features: identical item formats, homogeneous scoring scales, standard T scores, procedural checks, and similar…

Notes that, despite great contributions by Lawrence Kohlberg to understanding of moral development, counselors are only beginning to appreciate fully implications of his developmental psychology for practice of counseling and human development. Draws on collective body of Kohlberg's work to show how seven assumptions have direct relevance for…

Individuals direct their own development by setting developmental goals and striving for goal attainment. Human development includes reductions in discrepancies between desired and actual states, as is the case in goal attainment and reduction of aspirations, as well as increases of discrepancies, for example, when individuals increase their…

Selves and cultures are not independent entities. Focusing on the processes by which individuals and cultures participate in each other's functioning, we can begin to understand how personal and communal dimensions of selfhood must be represented in some form in all the world's cultures. (Contains 1 figure.)

We outline the nature of dynamic systems, both linear and nonlinear, and we review dynamic systems principles that apply well to various aspects of human development, including the emergence of new forms, phases of stability and instability, continuous and discontinuous change, and differentiation among individual trajectories. We then document…

Some arguments are presented why Developmental Science should be seen as integrative part of a general anthropology. This is the reason that developmental science is a boundary opening framework for anthropology, history, cultural sciences and philosophy. The relation between a more culturalistic and naturalistic orientation of developmental…

Near the end of his illustrious career, Gottlieb lamented the continued dominance of heritability analysis in human psychology and the difficulties in winning support for the developmental point of view. Recent, spectacular progress in molecular genetic neuroscience and the genetic study of behavior, however, is rendering heritability analysis…

In this contribution it is shown that Gilbert Gottlieb's theoretical contributions to developmental science, in particular his focus on individual development and his discussion of the limitations of developmental behavior genetics in this respect, are vindicated by recent theoretical developments in mathematical biology and psychometrics.