39th Annual Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society
Development At Risk: Typical & Atypical Developmental Pathways
4-6 June 2009, Park City, Utah, USA
Revised Submission Deadline: December 1, 2008

Call for Papers, Symposia and Posters
The Jean Piaget Society invites program submissions for the 39th Annual Meeting to take place in Park City, Utah, USA, at the Yarrow Hotel, on June 4–6, 2009.

This year’s meeting takes the theme of Development At Risk: Typical and Atypical Developmental Pathways.

The discipline of developmental psychopathology emerged from the integration of two ‘parent’ fields of developmental psychology and psychopathology and is based on the premise that studies of typical and atypical development are mutually informative. Accordingly, the typical course of development provides an essential metric for assessing the extent to which any individual pattern of development might be considered pathological or atypical in some way. Conversely, examples of atypical development are essential to understanding the organization of developing systems and challenges to the assumption of universality. In this framework, atypicality is considered within its broadest context to include any situation in which development may be at-risk for less than optimal attainment of societal or communal expectations at the relevant time points. Risk is often discussed in terms of statistical likelihood of poor outcomes; however, most outcomes are largely determined by complex transactions among the individuals, families, physical and social environments, communities, and larger societies.

The primary goal of the 2009 meeting is to foster insights into some of the ways that development can be at-risk within the context of an understanding of the ‘whole person’. A secondary, but complementary, goal is to commemorate early essential work in the emergence of the discipline of developmental psychopathology.

Plenary speakers include:

Nathan Fox (University of Maryland)
Alan Sroufe (University of Minnesota)
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (Columbia University)
Laurence Kirmayer (McGill University)
Thomas Achenbach (University of Vermont)
Scholars interested in knowledge and development are invited to participate whatever their discipline. Submissions need not address the program theme – all submissions are welcome.

Revised Submission Deadline: 1 December 2008
Please visit the Jean Piaget Society website (www.piaget.org) for submission details and on-line submission forms, or write to: Dr. Saba Ayman-Nolley JPS Executive Board s-ayman-nolley@neiu.edu.