problem in developmental psychology(e.g. Liben, 1987). By failing to make adistinction from the onset, however,the convergence of behavioural andneural approaches merely masks theproblem.

There are promising avenues where-by developmental psychology and theneurosciences combine to enlightenour understanding of cognitive devel-opment (e.g. Quartz, 1999). Whereasthis book provides a substantial intro-duction to this new synergy (and assuch is well suited as complementarymaterial for advanced courses), it alsocrucially highlights the necessity ofspecifying what we mean by cognitivedevelopment before we examine thebrain in search of it.

REFERENCES

Johnson MH. 1997. Developmental Cogni-tive Neuroscience. Blackwell Publishers:Cambridge, MA.

Liben LS. 1987. Approaches to deve-lopment and learning: conflict and con-gruence. In Development and Learning:Con-flict or Congruence? Liben LS (ed.).Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Hillsdale,NJ; 237–252.

Quartz SR. 1999. The constructivist brain.Trends in Cognitive Sciences 3: 48–57.

Sylvain Sirois1 and Denis Mareschal2

1Department of PsychologyThe University of Manchester, UK

2Center for Brain and Cognitive DevelopmentBirkbeck College, London, UK

DOI: 10.1002/icd. 306

THE SELF IN TIME:DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES.Edited by Chris Moore and KarenLemmon. Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, New Jersey, pp. 268.Price: £50.50 (hardback).

This book is an edited collection ofpapers that were presented as a sym-posium in 1997 at the meeting of theSociety for Research in Child Develop-ment held in Washington, DC. Thepapers all relate to the development ofan important part of the concept of selfthat is introduced as the TemporallyExtended Self (TES)}that is, therecognition that the self has a past,a present and a future and that allare experienced by the same self,which has a subjective and an objectivedimension. The contributors seem togenerally be in agreement that a fairlymature TES is in place by about4 years. The way in which it developsand the processes that are involvedare discussed and some generalconclusions drawn although differ-ences are still apparent. The book

draws together a wealth of researchand theories that also cover some newground, as the authors recognize thatuntil now, most research has focusedon the past and present self; conclu-sions about the future self have beeninferred.

The introductory chapter by theeditors provides a solid grounding inthe history of TES research, the mainconcepts of the theories, the use of theTES and gives an excellent overview ofthe whole book and the way in which itis organized. Throughout the book,there are conclusions at the end of eachchapter which give clear and conciseoverviews. These are well worth read-ing prior to the actual chapter to set thecontext of what to expect.

The next three chapters discuss therole that narratives between parentsand children play in the child’s devel-oping TES. Nelson, in Chapter 2, looksat how dialogues between parents andchildren help children come to think ofthemselves and others as unique in-dividuals with a changing but contin-uous ‘self’. The theme continues in the

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next chapter, where Fivush addressesthe question of how and when youngchildren begin to understand that theirinner thoughts and memories areuniquely theirs. She suggests that thisis ‘a critical component of transformingepisodic memories into autobiographi-cal ones’ (p. 37). She gives examples ofparents and children jointly reminis-cing and suggests that it is through theevaluation of past experiences thatchildren learn that their representationof the past is not necessarily the sameas others’ representations. Chapter 4looks at the role that talking aboutfuture events may have in children’sconceptual development. Hudson sug-gests that the future self may be aharder concept to grasp than the pastas it is, as yet, undetermined. Interest-ingly she found no differences in thestyle of mother talk between past andfuture events, although whether thefuture events were familiar or un-known does alter style. She suggeststhat parents tend to refer to generalevents and past events in the contextof the future and this may be‘scaffolding’ children to learn aboutthe future self.

In Chapter 5, Povinelli presents aningenious method of investigatingyoung children’s understanding of thecontinuity of the self, that recent pastevents may still be pertinent to thepresent self (having a sticker on yourhead). In the following chapter,Welch–Ross sets the development ofthe autobiographical self in a socialcontext and highlights the necessity ofrepresentation abilities for social meta-cognition. Again the importance of anunderstanding of the subjectivity of theself is discussed.

The next three chapters focus on thefuture self. In Chapter 7, Atance andO’Neill talk about the future selfand its role in planning. They look atthe way in which general events canbe planned without involving theself}again clever methodology butwith recognized limitations. Barresi in

Chapter 8, concentrates on whether theimaginative projection into future selfand future other develop in parallel.That makes sense in principle becauseto imagine yourself in the future, ‘youhave to imagine being an altogetherdifferent self, who exists in a differenttime, with a different perspective onthings’ (p. 150). In the last experimen-tal chapter (9), Lemmon and Moorelook at whether past, present andfuture self-understanding develop atthe same time and how this fits intoautonoetic consciousness. It seemsthey do develop at the same time andthat the emergence of TES coincideswith the development of autonoeticconsciousness (allows the child toconnect the experienced past andpotential future experiences to thepresent self).

The final three chapters are moretheoretical with the focus on the TES inrelation to episodic and autobiographi-cal memory. Perner (Chapter 10) sug-gests what McCormack and Hoerl(Chapter 11) call a constitutive connec-tion between memory and self-con-sciousness whereas their view is morecausal. Perner’s chapter suggests thatchildren cannot experience genuineepisodic memories until they under-stand the relation between re-experi-ence of an event and the originalexperience of the event and that theyneed to individuate past events andrepresent them as taking place atindividual times. He argues that The-ory of Mind development plays a rolein children’s abilities to re-experienceevents. The argument however inChapter 11 is that episodic memorydoes not necessarily require self-refer-ence, but that the skill required is aparticular form of perspective-takinginvolving the ability to engage incertain types of self-conscious reflec-tion and reasoning. Chapter 12 identi-fies four levels of self-consciousnessand talks about how the recursivenature of consciousness allows chil-dren to develop both a subjective and

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objective view of the world and them-selves.

At whom this book is aimed is noteasy to determine, as it certainly doesnot come cheap! It is too complex forundergraduates in my opinion, butperhaps rather narrow for many re-searchers. A discussion chapter linkingthe main themes together and contain-ing a critical review of the issuespresented in the book would havemade the book more coherent. Never-

theless it is a very interesting and well-presented book that deals with thecomplicated area of self-concept andcontinuity over time, filling a void inparticular, of work related to the futureself.

Sarah Burton

School of PsychologyUniversity of Nottingham, UK

DOI: 10.1002/icd. 309

CHILDHOOD AND SOCIETY:GROWING UP IN AN AGE OFUNCERTAINTY.Nick Lee. Open University Press,Buckingham, 2001.Price £16.99.ISBN 0-335-20608-5.

In this reader-friendly book, Nick Leegives a careful guide to new researchabout childhood. He combines clearreviews of past research, includinguseful summaries of how the historyof philosophy and politics have shapednotions of childhood, with suggestionsfor future analysis.

Although children live in and oftheir bodies, childhood is not biologi-cal, but is a set of political beliefs abouthow children ought to live in relationto adults. Lee’s review shows howresearchers and practitioners, includ-ing leading thinkers such as Rousseauand Piaget, base their work on con-temporary assumptions. These as-sumptions powerfully form, and arereaffirmed by, their findings and con-clusions, which then reflect fashions oftheir time rather than necessarily chil-dren’s actual experiences or abilities.

Beliefs about childhood and adult-hood alter radically in time and place.Immense recent changes have trans-formed assumptions that growing upends when adulthood is reached, and

one settles into a home, career, partner-ship and life style happily ever after.Instead, today’s adults are faced withfrequent changes, risky choices, anddemands to form and reform theirpersonal identities. We can no longerassume, Lee proposes, that adult beingis the fixed mature endpoint, andchildhood simply a gradual ascent ofhuman becoming. Yet economic pres-sures throughout the past 150 yearshave accentuated child–adult, becom-ing–being dichotomies as, for instance,many children have moved from beingwage-earners into being wholly depen-dent on adults. This can leave childrenin limbo, waiting for their ‘real’ lives tobegin. Their place is seen as one oflearning and practising, such as byattending school. The problems thenposed for children are illustrated inextreme form by street children, whoare neither human becomings (schoolchildren) nor human beings (adults).Although they carry many ‘adult’duties and responsibilities, supportingtheir local economies and often theirown families, they are seen as ‘out-of-place’. They are blamed for not livingthe sheltered innocent life which child-hood is supposed to be, and therebyfor not adhering to the accepted socialmorality.

Just as gender studies have madepsychologists and sociologists far more

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