Developmental psychology
School · 1920s onward, Switzerland, Britain, and the United States · Psychology, stage 2: Map the schools
Developmental psychology studies how thinking, emotion, and social capacity change across a life, and it is organised around a question the other schools do not ask: what is the order in which things arrive, and what has to be in place before the next thing can be. Jean Piaget supplied the cognitive half, treating children's systematic errors as evidence that their thinking is organised differently rather than merely emptier. John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth supplied the social and emotional half, showing that the infant-caregiver bond is a system in its own right and building a laboratory procedure that made its variations observable. The field is unusually method-driven, because most of its questions cannot be answered by a single measurement: longitudinal designs follow the same people for decades, and cross-sectional designs compare age groups at one time and risk mistaking a generational difference for a developmental one.
What it claims
- Psychological capacities appear in a describable order, and earlier ones constrain later ones.
- Children's characteristic errors are evidence about how their thinking is organised.
- The infant-caregiver bond is a distinct system with lasting consequences.
- Claims about change over time require designs that actually track time.
Key ideas
People
Sources
- Developmental psychology Wikipedia
- The Philosophy of Childhood Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Attachment theory Wikipedia
