Developmental Psychology

Frank Keil’s Developmental Psychology represents his vision of how psychology should be taught and is based on nearly four decades of teaching a lecture course in developmental psychology and conducting developmental research. With a cohesive narrative, clear art programme and carefully crafted pedagogy, the book guides students through material that is as rich as it is intriguing. Keil’s narrative reflects his passion for engaging students’ intellectual curiosity with an analytical approach that explores the big questions, links theory with evidence and treats developmental psychology as a science. Developmental Psychology invites readers to celebrate the beauty and to understand the depth of psychological development.

Frank C. Keil is the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology and Professor of Linguistics and chair of the Psychology Department at Yale University. Keil received his B.S. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973, an M.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1975, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. He was a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University from 1977 to 1998 and has been at Yale since 1998. For over 35 years, he has taught an undergraduate lecture course in developmental psychology as well as advanced seminars at the undergraduate and graduate levels on topics in cognitive development and cognition. Keil has published extensively on topics concerned with many areas in the development of cognition and language. He has written two books on aspects of conceptual development, and he and Robert Wilson have edited the MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, which was selected as the Outstanding Book in Psychology by the Association of American Publishers. Keil has served as president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology and has received numerous awards for his scholarship, including the Boyd R. McCandless Award from the American Psychological Association (Developmental Psychology), the Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health, and the Ann L. Brown Award for Excellence in Developmental Research. Keil has served on the Board on Science Education for the National Academy of Sciences, the McDonnell Foundation Advisory Board on Brain and Cognition, and numerous other boards and committees for government agencies and foundations. He also served as Master of Morse College at Yale University from 2001-2012. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Keil, and his wife Kristi Lockhart, a clinical and developmental psychologist, are parents of three sons who are now in their twenties and thirties.