The Rise of Contemporary Themes (1960–1985) 211thinking had a profound impact on developmental psychol-
ogy. Such influential developmental researchers as Bijou,
Baer, and Gewirtz were all influenced by Skinner (Bijou &
Baer, 1961; Gewirtz, 1969). The modern behavior modifica-
tion approach to the control and shaping of children’s be-
havior in classrooms, homes, and institutional settings owes
a direct debt to Skinner and his theory of operant learning.
Reflections on the Era of Expansion
Under the guidance of the learning titans of this era, develop-
mentalists once again became a part of mainstream psychol-
ogy. A mechanistic orientation characterized the theorizing of
the period, whether under the guidance of Hullian-influenced
Sears or of operant-oriented Skinner. Theorists searched for
broad, universal principles of development, with little con-
cern for either culture or secular influences, although Sears
did document social-class differences in child-rearing prac-
tices in one of his studies (Sears et al., 1957). Neither Sears
nor Skinner was a prominent provider of descriptions or pre-
scriptions for parents in the tradition of Watson and Gesell,
but they both had an abiding American faith in the potential
of developmental science to help children. Skinner’s inven-
tion of the baby box and teaching machine and Sears’s hope
that his studies of child rearing would provide scientific
guidelines for future parents illustrate their commitment to an
applied developmental psychology.
In sum, during this era, developmental psychology became
recognized as part of mainstream psychology, but it had not
yet reached a mature state. In the case of Sears, there was still
too much borrowing from the past, and in the case of Skinner,
there was not enough recognition of the uniqueness of chil-
dren that might require distinctive and separate approaches.
THE RISE OF CONTEMPORARY
THEMES (1960–1985)
In the era from 1960 to 1985, a number of themes rather than
a number of theorists guided research and theory in de-
velopmental psychology. These themes were the return of a
concern about cognition, the discovery of precocity, the re-
defining of social learning, the refinement of the study of so-
cial interaction, and the emergence of an interest in emotion.
The Return of Cognition
Several significant events transformed our thinking about
development in this quarter century. The Russians launched
Sputnik, and Americans began to worry about their educa-
tional system. Coincidentally, there was a rediscovery of
Piaget by American psychologists. J. McVicker Hunt (1906–
1991) published his influential treatise, Intelligence and
Experience(1961), which reintroduced Piagetian thinking
to Americans. A few years later, a systematic overview of
Piaget’s theory was offered by John Flavell in his book The
Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget(1963). Piaget’s
views of nature and nurture as both necessary and interactive
quickly became prevalent in developmental psychology. A
flurry of empirical work that both supported and challenged
Piagetian theory appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. This re-
vitalized interest in cognitive development coincided with
the onset of the cognitive revolution (Miller, Galanter, &
Pribram, 1960) in mainstream psychology, so it is not sur-
prising that cognitive development returned as a major theme
of research.The Discovery of PrecocityIn part the result of Piaget’s early work on infant cognitive
and perceptual development and in part the consequence of
new experimental techniques for assessing infant visual, au-
ditory, and olfactory capacities (e.g., Fantz, 1963; Lipsitt,
1963), there was a resurgence of interest in documenting in-
fant sensory and perceptual competence. Studies of infants
challenged traditional views and ushered in an era of discov-
ering the “competent infant.” In contrast to earlier views of
infants as limited, helpless, and incompetent, these new
studies revealed an infant who was biologically prepared for
social, perceptual, and cognitive encounters with the exter-
nal environment. Babies were revealed to be capable of vi-
sual and auditory discriminations (e.g., color, form, pitch)
from a much younger age than earlier theorists had assumed.
In turn, this prepared the way for a closer look at biological
contributions to early development. A similar set of ad-
vances concerning the remarkable capacity of infants to
learn was also reported (Lipsitt, 1963; Papousek, 1961;
Sameroff, 1970).Redefining Social Learning TheoryOn the socialization front, there was a serious challenge
to the Freud-Hull approach to social development. Albert
Bandura and Richard Walters, in their 1963 volume Social
Learning and Personality Development,forcefully rejected
the assumptions of the previous era. Instead of endorsing
a drive-based theory of development, they proposed that
observational learning or modeling was the major way that
children acquire new behaviors and modify old ones. As sub-
sequently developed by Bandura (1969, 1977), cognitive