In the past fifty years, scholars of human development have been moving from studying change in humans within sharply defined periods, to seeing many more of these phenomenon as more profitably studied over time and in relation to other processes. The Handbook of Life-Span Development, Volume 1: Cognition, Biology, and Methods  presents the study of human development conducted by the best scholars in the 21st century. Social workers, counselors and public health workers will receive coverage of of the biological and cognitive aspects of human change across the lifespan.

Richard M. Lerner is the Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science and the Director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University. A developmental psychologist, he has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society. Lerner is the author or editor of 65 books and more than 450 scholarly articles and chapters.

Dr. Willis (Bill) F. Overton is the Thaddeus Lincoln Bolton Professor of Psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Overton has been Editor of Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development; Associate Editor of Developmental Psychology, and board member of many developmental and cognitive-developmental journals.