Who is father of developmental psychology

It was Piaget's observations of his own children that served as the basis for many of his later theories. Piaget identified himself as a genetic epistemologist.

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the origin, nature, extent, and limits of human knowledge. Piaget was interested not only in the nature of thought but also in how it develops and understanding how genetics impact this process. His early work with Binet's intelligence tests had led him to conclude that children think differently than adults. While this is a widely accepted notion today, it was considered revolutionary at the time.

It was this observation that inspired his interest in understanding how knowledge grows throughout childhood. He suggested that children sort the knowledge they acquire through their experiences and interactions into groupings known as schemas.

When new information is acquired, it can either be assimilated into existing schemas or accommodated through revising an existing schema or creating an entirely new category of information. Today, he is best known for his research on children's cognitive development.

Piaget studied the intellectual development of his own three children and created a theory that described the stages that children pass through in the development of intelligence and formal thought processes. At this point in development, children know the world primarily through their senses and motor movements. At this point, logical thought emerges, but children still struggle with abstract and theoretical thinking.

Piaget provided support for the idea that children think differently than adults, and his research identified several important milestones in the mental development of children. His work also generated interest in cognitive and developmental psychology.

Piaget's theories are widely studied today by students of both psychology and education. Piaget held many chair positions throughout his career and conducted research in psychology and epistemology.

He created the International Center for Genetic Epistemology in and served as its director until his death on September 16, Piaget's theories continue to be studied in the areas of psychology, sociology, education, and genetics. His work contributed to our understanding of the cognitive development of children.

While earlier researchers had often viewed children simply as smaller versions of adults, Piaget helped demonstrate that childhood is a unique and important period of human development. His work also influenced other notable psychologists including Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg. Above all, however, he was the developmental psychologist of the 20th century.

For two decades, from the early s to the early s, Piagetian theory and Piaget's research findings dominated developmental psychology worldwide, much as Freud's ideas had dominated abnormal psychology a generation before. Almost single-handedly, he shifted the focus of developmental research away from its traditional concerns with social and emotional development and toward cognitive development.

If you want to learn more about Piaget, consider some of these biographies of his life. Another early contributor to the study of development was James Mark Baldwin , a Princeton-educated American philosopher and psychologist who did quantitative and experimental research on infant development. He made important contributions to early psychology, psychiatry, and the theory of evolution.

The 20th century marked the formation of qualitative distinctions between children and adults. Watson was the founder of the field of behaviorism, which emphasized the role of nurture, or the environment, in human development. In the book, he warned against the inevitable dangers of a mother providing too much love and affection.

Watson explained that love, along with all things observable behavior, is conditioned. Watson supported his warnings by mentioning invalidism, saying that society does not overly comfort children as they become young adults in the real world, so parents should not set up these unrealistic expectations. Piaget believed that an interdisciplinary approach was the best, indeed the only, way to explore knowledge.

When working on a new problem, he avoided reading scientific literature directly related to it, for fear that it might stifle his creativity. Instead, he focused on the literature in related fields, and often asked colleagues to give mini-lectures on how their particular specialty related to epistemological questions.

Piaget also preferred a descriptive, rather than a statistical approach to research, and some scientists think this is why his ideas were slow to be adopted in the United States. He kept extensive notes on each of his three children, recording many of their first movements as newborns and conducting simple experiments with them as they grew older.

For example, he recorded the following observation when his son Laurent was one month old:. First he makes vigorous sucking-like movements, then his right hand may be seen approaching his mouth, touching his lower lip and finally being grasped. But as only the index finger was grasped, the hand fell out again.

Shortly afterward it returned. This time the thumb was in the mouth while the index finger was placed between the gums and the upper lip. The hand then moves 5 centimeters away from the mouth only to reenter it; now the thumb is grasped and the other fingers remain outside. For laboratory experiments, Piaget and his team devised questioning procedures that they used to begin conversations with children.

Each conversation changed course depending upon the response of the child, and Piaget himself freely admitted that he rarely exposed his subjects to consistent experimental conditions. Nor did he work with many children outside the cultural milieu of Geneva. There has been no consensus, however, as to the best application of his findings, and Piaget did not usually comment on such practical issues as curricula.

Terman also initiated the first longitudinal study of development, beginning in His sample, selected for being gifted in intelligence, continues to be followed today. Although Vygotsky has been dead for more than six decades. His ideas are particularly suited for the contextualist theoretical framework which has became popular in recent years. Born and raised in Russia, Vygotsky was a Marxist who believed in the importance of the social and historical context to development.

At the same time, he had an appreciation of the internal features of development. This ability to consolidate these two diverse positions has led some to see his work as forming the basis for an integrative theory of development.

Although he is often compared to Piaget, Vygotsky differed from him in substantial ways. For instance, he placed much more emphasis on the role of the parent and teacher in cognitive development. John Watson , the father of behaviorism, ushered in a movement that differed in important ways from classical developmental psychology.

Learning became the central issue for study. Hence, a model based on Locke rather than Rousseau became the standard. Later, Mary Cover Jones After his departure from academic psychology, Watson continued to write about child development, and his work became popular among parents. He was instrumental in promoting a scientific basis for child care.

Eventually, he was replaced as the leader of the child-care movement by less rigid and more child-oriented specialists such as Benjamin Spock. Influences were still felt from outside of learning theory. Kurt Lewin , for instance, was more interested in motivation and conflict than learning. He conducted some well-designed field studies which had a practical impact on changing developmental psychology.

One variation included the research of a group at Yale University under the intellectual leadership of Clark Hull This group began a program of research that tried to combine learning theory and psychoanalytic theory. A member of the group, Robert Sears , applied learning principles to an understanding of the socialization of children. While the group was ultimately unsuccessful in uniting learning theory and psychoanalysis, they succeeded in moving developmental psychology away from a descriptive science to an empirically testable one.

By the s and s in America, developmental psychology was dominated by these learning theory approaches. Notable among more recent learning theorists was B. Skinner , a strict behaviorist, who stressed the role of operant learning. A highly influential contemporary behaviorist, Albert Bandura has focused more on social learning than Skinner.

He has emphasized the importance of modeling, and has conducted many experiments demonstrating how socialization takes place, including the development of aggression, altruism, and sex roles. More recently he has focused on issues of health psychology. Although he contributed a chapter to the first Handbook of Child Psychology , his early work was largely ignored in the United States. By the s, however, a revival of his work began. His stage theory soon became the centerpiece for American developmental psychology, attaining its most important role in the s.

His theory was not only essential for most psychologists, it became essential for educators as well. Piaget saw the child as a scientist, actively constructing increasingly more complex views of the world.