Developmental psychology: a maturing field

The discipline has matured from anecdotal to information-processing models.

Human development has been studied from about the time of St. Augustine, but it's only been the last 100 years or so that psychologists have applied scientific methods to its examination.

Though the discipline began modestly with largely anecdotal observations of children in the late 19th century, it has grown throughout the 20th century to be an integral part of experimental psychology and to cover the entire psychological spectrum.

Classic among those first observations of children was the 1881 German work "Mind of a Child," Willhelm Preyer's biography of his son. It contained much psychological insight, though it was only implicitly psychological. Still, many of these anecdotal studies were psychologically insightful, such as Millicant Shinn's "The Biography of a Baby," published in 1900.

Such works were not considered seriously as part of the "new psychology." Roots of that new or experimental developmental psychology in America took hold as early as 1891 when G. Stanley Hall used questionnaires to study the "context of children's minds." While this "child-study movement" produced little acceptable research, Hall continued to champion the study of development.

Some of the earliest and most significant laboratory studies on children were carried out by John B. Watson and his associates. Watson's infamous "Little Albert" study in 1920 with Rosalie Raynor demonstrated the development of conditioned fears. Later he directed the thesis of Mary Cover Jones--the "Little Peter" study--showing how fear is conditioned and deconditioned.

Three distinct lines of research methodology developed: the study of an individual, the study of small groups of children and parametric studies of larger groups. Among the best known of parametric studies began in 1921 when Lewis Terman at Stanford University began longitudinal studies on children based on their IQ scores. Then in 1922, Walter F. Dearborn at Harvard began the Harvard Growth Study, which studied the development of 1,500 children over a period of 12 years. Growth studies became the rage, with valuable studies at Berkeley in the late 1920s and at the Fels Research Institute in the 1930s and 40s.

Perhaps more influential were cross-sectional studies by Arnold Gesell studying the norms of child development. Gesell and F.L. Illg's "Infant and Child in The Culture of Today" was eclipsed in popularity among parents only by Benjamin Spock's books.

A fresh perspective came through Kurt Koffka's "The Growth of the Mind" in 1924. Koffka introduced Gestalt psychology's insights into human development.

Meanwhile, Kurt Lewin's work at the Child Welfare Research Station at Ames, Iowa, contributed to the literature, particularly with small groups of children. Lewin was influenced by Gestalt theory and developed a field of psychology that emphasized social fields and maturation in the behavior of children. Films he made in 1929 demonstrated the significance of social and environmental fields on child behavior. And his studies on the influence of groups on children's behavior--especially in frustration and aggression--are still classics.

Psychoanalytical theories also gained significance in the study of human development, initially through the influence of Freud's early psychosexual theory of development. In the 1940s at Berkeley, Erik Erikson developed his own stages of development based on psychoanalytic principles.

While Jean Piaget had been studying children since the 1920s, his work would be known in America only much later. Piaget's theories of cognitive and moral development were fundamentally stage theories, although he saw a significant place for the environment and an interactive relationship between maturation and experience. His "The Psychology of Intelligence" in 1950 established him in the American psychological scene.

Many researchers influenced by Piaget in the 1960s and 1970s helped bring cognitive psychology into child development. For example, Jerome Bruner worked to integrate Piaget's cognitive notions with learning theories. But by the 1980s and 1990s, Piaget's theories and other theories influenced by him were under fire. His hypotheses were criticized by some as incomplete at best and incorrect at worst.

Researchers and theorists have since come to Piaget's defense. While they are still influential, other models and theories have competed with Piaget's for developmentalists' attention in the 1990s. Information-processing models and increasing emphases on individual differences rather than normative standards have grown in influence.

In the last 25 years, partly due to society's increasing concerns about aging and adolescence, developmental psychology has expanded and now covers psychology through the life span.

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