CHAPTER 10
Developmental Psychology
ROSS D. PARKE AND K. ALISON CLARKE-STEWART
205THE BEGINNING YEARS (1880–1914) 206
The Founders 206
Characteristics of the Early Theories 207
A PERIOD OF INSTITUTIONALIZATION AND
FRAGMENTATION (1915–1940) 208
The Institutes of Child Development 208
A Triad of Towering Theorists 208
An Appraisal of the Era 209
THE ERA OF EXPANSION (1940–1960) 210
Fusing Learning Theory and Psychoanalysis 210
An Operant Orientation 210
Reflections on the Era of Expansion 211
THE RISE OF CONTEMPORARY THEMES (1960–1985) 211
The Return of Cognition 211
The Discovery of Precocity 211
Redefining Social Learning Theory 211
From Social Interaction to
Social Relationships 212
Embracing Emotion 212
Advances in Theory and Method 213
THE CURRENT PERIOD (1985–PRESENT) 213
Return to the Biology of Development 213
Deepening the Study of Cognitive Development 214
Appreciation of the Role of Culture
in Development 214
Appraisal of the Current Era 215
A GLANCE INTO THE FUTURE 217
REFERENCES 217The onset of the twenty-first century heralds a new era for
developmental psychologists, whose work is being enriched
by new findings from such fields as behavioral and molecular
genetics, cognitive science, cultural studies, sociology, epi-
demiology, history, psychiatry, and pediatrics. At the same
time, many of our current questions owe a clear debt to our
forebears. These earlier theorists influenced thinking and re-
search in ways that are still evident today, and a review of
their contributions reminds us that many questions in our
field are recurring ones. Issues that have disappeared and
reappeared in slightly different guises at various stages of the
field’s history are still part of the contemporary scene. It’s not
that developmentalists simply recycle problems, but progress
often proceeds to a point and comes to a halt until develop-
ments in other fields, new conceptualizations and formula-
tions of a problem, or methodological and design advances
reenergize the issue and bring it to a new level of understand-
ing and investigation. By stimulating interest in the historical
roots of our discipline, we hope both to sharpen our appreci-
ation of our forebears and to develop a source of hypotheses
that may now be ripe for investigation in the current scientific
climate.
We can give only the broadest outline of the history of the
field of developmental psychology. There are many complex-
ities that we have had to ignore. We hope that this overview
will whet the reader’s appetite for further exploration. Fuller
reviews of our historical roots are available in Parke,
Ornstein, Rieser, and Zahn-Waxler (1994) and Cairns (1998),
and a reprint series of original articles and volumes by earlier
theorists is available in Wozniak (1993a, 1993b, 1994, 1995).
We have divided the history of developmental psychology
into five time periods—the beginning years of developmen-
tal psychology (1880–1914), the period of institutionaliza-
tion and fragmentation (1915–1940), the era of expansion
(1940–1960), the rise of contemporary themes (1960–1985),
and the current period (1985 to present). Across these peri-
ods, we discuss recurring issues of theory and method to
illustrate the ways in which there has been both constancy
and change in developmental psychologists’ views of the
central issues of the field. We argue that, in many regards,
there have been major strides in the subtlety of the distinc-
tions and the sophistication of the measurements and designs
brought to bear on developmental questions. At the same
time, there is much consistency between the perspectives of
our ancestors of a century ago and the views of contemporary
developmental theorists.
Another thesis is that the agenda of contemporary devel-
opmental psychology has more in common with the field’s
agenda from the turn of the century than with the agenda of
the middle era (1920–1960). This middle period, with its