Talk:Developmental psychology

Image

Is the image entirely relevent?--82.32.0.26 21:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

How about an image that portrays a life-span approach to developmental psychology? --Mcfa0750 04:22, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Evolutionary process

Evolutionary process is continuos and develops in a step-wise fashion. This should also applies to the evolutionary development of cognition. It is my belief that cognition is developed in modular blocks. As evolutionary process progresses from species to species, these blocks are preseved, modified, expanded, etc. Human brain is at the top of such process. -- (207.162.148.213) 20:40, 4 September 2003

Removed mention of movie "Sixth Sense"

I removed a recent addition that featured the movie "Sixth Sense" as a popular culture reference to Developmental Psychology. I really liked this film, but it's just not related to Developmental Psychology (which is an area of scientific study). This movie does feature Child Psychopathology (which is a mental health profession). Maybe that would be a better page for this? -- khg 08:41, 15 April 2004 i dont knw anytin about dat.............................................

Psychology side bar (template)

A side bar was added to the article about Developmental Psychology. It contained a list of some areas, sub areas, and therapeutic approaches of Psychology. There are two reasons I felt it should be removed. First, it cluttered the article without any real benefit. There is already a set of hierarchical categories to help people find out about other areas of Psychology. You can also already navigate directly to related areas of Psychology from the final paragraph. Second, I am concerned that this side-bar is convoluted and biased in its structure. An example of it being convoluted is listing both therapeutic techniques (e.g., psychodynamic) and research areas (e.g., cognitive psychology) as “approaches.” An example of bias is the way it gives a select group of sub-areas in Psychology (e.g., Evolutionary, Self) the same status as broad areas of research (e.g., Cognitive, Social , Developmental). I tried to find a page to edit the side-bar, but couldn’t. Could someone please explain where the discussion and development of these things is happening? -- khg 15:03, 1 November 2004

The Psychology side bar (template) was already here when I looked recently (November 2005), but I added it to several other pages 19 November 2005. Although I don't agree that it adds nothing (and neither would the many others who've made or approve of similar templates for other subjects), I think it's worth having a conversation about its contents. I saw a claim somewhere that the items included were based on a review of what was most often referenced in textbooks (the template does not contain "self psychology" now), but I can't find that comment now; it's not on the template's page. -DoctorW 10:56, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

DoctorW, thank you for showing me where to go to edit the side-bar. Somebody added the sidebar back soon after I removed it. I never felt it worth continuing to debate. But I still feel it's clutter. The fields that are related to Developmental Psychology are listed in the text with direct links. At its best, that makes the side-bar redundant. And I still feel the bar is biased. Notice how it puts Humanistic, Gestalt, Evolutionary, Sensory, and Linguistics on par with areas like Clinical, Developmental, Social, and Cognitive. The former are arguably sub-topics of the latter. I know you might make convincing arguments that some of the former deserve to be viewed as independent branches of Psychology. But shouldn't the inter-relationships between sub-disciplines be a topic for the relevant articles? I just feel sticking these things into a side-bar implicitly endorses one way of organizing psychological knowledge. -- khg, 6 January, 2006

Steiner's descriptions of child development

There is a question as to whether these should be included; one user removed them with the justification that 'developmental psychology comes from a specific literature of peer-reviewed scientific research'. This is an artificial distinction; Steiner's model of development is more widely used practically than most of those cited. I have restored the reference. Hgilbert 01:25, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry; the fact that Developmental psychology is a scientific endeavor based on the conversations among researchers grounded in research (versus models that are not subjected to scientific scrutiny and are not a part of the main conversations researchers are engaged in) is not an artificial distinction. It is fundamental to whether the model belongs on this page versus another page. Whether or not Steiner's model can be considered to be used "widely" or not in education is irrelevant. If you think it is, make your argument for adding something about it on an "education" page. Steiner's model is certainly not a prominent one in Developmental psychology! I am familiar with its role as an educational model, but as far as I know (and I'm a Developmental psychologist), it plays no role at all in Developmental psychology. Also, I notice that all of the pages you (hgilbert) have edited have to do with Rudolf Steiner; you should be careful not to veer over the line into POV advocacy--this is an encyclopedia that strives for NPOV (see also Wikipedia:Neutral point of view). -DoctorW 00:56, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I have reread the Neutral point of view article carefully, and it clearly states that Wiki's version of neutrality is to include all relevant viewpoints. To exclude one because you do not agree with it or have not heard of it is not adequate. Steiner's is a serious model of child development, taught at a number of universities and colleges that I know about; there are a large number of book published that cover his model; there are a large number of educational institutions that use it practically (more than 2,500 to date, and increasing rather than decreasing). I know of no serious refutations of his work, which is in harmony with (but preceded) some of the other theories you do mention. I am not trying to put more emphasis on this model in the article than it deserves, which would be breaking NPOV; a factual mention is not a promotion of NPOV. I suggest you reread Wiki's policy. -- Hgilbert

You are continuing to ignore the title of this page, "Developmental psychology." It is not "Education." In over 8 years of bachelor's, master's, and doctoral course work in Developmental psychology at leading universities, and in my years of research afterward, I never heard Steiner's name or a reference to his model mentioned once. If Developmental psychologists completely ignore someone's work, it cannot be considered a part of Developmental psychology, no matter how "serious" you and other non-specialists think it is. I don't have anything against Steiner's model, I really don't. Perhaps there are Developmental psychology textbooks or review articles in peer-reviewed Developmental psychology journals that I don't know about that refer to it as a major theory. The responsibility is yours to cite such Developmental psychology sources. If you find such sources that refer to it as a minor theory, perhaps you could find some place in this article for it that's more appropriate than among the major theories. -DoctorW 05:12, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

HGilbert, I understand how you can feel Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf schooling are important, practical, ideas that you would like raise people's awareness of. But DoctorW really is right to say that this article is about Developmental Psychology, not educational philosophy. Like DoctorW, I also have a Ph. D. in Developmental Psychology and I agree completely that Steiner's work is not part of the scientific field, Developmental Psychology. Maybe you feel DoctorW and I just so happen to share the same idiosyncratic bias? To make sure we don't, I just looked up Rudolf Steiner in the name index / references of every Developmental Psychology textbook I have in my office. Across 16 distinct textbooks I did not find even one mention of Rudolf Steiner. That is, not only did his work fail to get into the substance of one of these books, but it did not even get into a side box that many books have which show important links between Developmental Psychology and other fields. These books vary in approach, difficulty, year published, and focus; they include 10 introductory books (Baldwin, 1980; Bee, 2000; Berger & Thompson, 2000; DeHart, Stroufe, Cooper, 2000; Feldman 2003; Gardner, 1982; Heatherington, Park, Gauvain, & Locke, 2006; LeFrancois, 1995; Papalia, Gross, Feldman, 2003; Santrock, in press; Siegler, DeLoache, & Eisenberg, 2003; ) , 2 advanced textbooks (Slater & Bremner, 2003; Smith, Cowie, & Blades, 2003) and 4 Cognitive Development books (Bjorklund, 1989; Flavell, Miller, & Miller, 2002; Siegler & Alibali, 2005, Small 1983). There are many things we could quibble about in this article, but Steiner's place in it is not one of them. His work just is not Developmental Psychology. -- khg, 6 January, 2006

I certainly understand both your perspectives. Let me take another tack. Would you say that a description of child development that articulated three stages of psychological growth- an earliest stage of concrete, sensory-based representations; a second stage (beginning at 6 or 7 years of age) of pictorial thinking, and a third stage (beginning at 12-14 years of age) of abstract thinking - belongs to developmental psychology? If so, would you say that someone who articulated such a theory (articulating three sub-stages for each of the stages I have listed here), and did so before Piaget, has done work in developmental psychology? Most curious about your answer, Hgilbert 21:50, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the Steiner thing at all. RickM Oct. 27, 2006

I think Steiners theories of child development would be better referenced in Child Development a page which takes a multidisciplinary approach to the topic. --121.45.89.254 (talk) 13:32, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Criticism Criticism

The page asserts that "For instance, results from twin and adoption studies indicate that IQ and the Big Five personality traits are heritable, meaning that they run in families due to genetics." Though a citation needed tag is present, I'm going to remove this sentence, becuase it doesn't flow from the surrounding sentences which are more reasoned, and flow, and furthermore, this kind of language fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and strength of the heritability indices. These studies, which are fundamentally no different than 19th century studies by Francis Galton, measure concordance of traits, given known genetic variation, and although we know that genes must surely play a role (as they do) these tests prove very little about genetics, and often prove that developmental and contextual forces play some role. Though this is also without proper citation, I'm pretty sure that adoptive siblings have higher "heritability" concordances for IQ and Big Five traits than first cousins. Thought I think that some measure of balance between nature and nurture perspectives is appropriate in this article, I think that claims about the explanatory power of genetic information shouldn't be over estimated, or recklessly deployed. Tychoish —Preceding comment was added at 04:07, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

History

I have made a modest attempt to provide some historical background to the existing article. Please feel free to modify (especially to add to) this!!! I hope all feel that Shakespeare, Rousseau and Steiner -despite not being professional or empirical psychologists - do belong to the tradition of describing psychology developmentally. Hgilbert 16:59, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I just want to commend Hgilbert on a job well done. Experts on the intellectual figures mentioned (and their relation to developmental psychology) can edit and expand this new historical background section - a welcome addition - and Steiner's being mentioned briefly in this historical context seems appropriate (certainly much more so than in the introductory paragraph). -DoctorW 03:13, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Intelligence

Where is any information on intelligence and the use of IQ tests? This seems to be a POV agenda. Please add them, if you can't I will. Let me know.--Tstrobaugh 02:19, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Quality

I'm very surprised this was rated as a B. Whoever did so must not have read the article, it is very low quality. I think this needs to be greatly expanded, reworded to be more neutral (not to mention free of typos) which I have started off by editing two sections. I think we need input of some real psychologists and psychiatrists here, or at least some textbooks respected in the field.

This reads like a grooming guide, is very generic, and unscientific. For example, in the adolescense section, it says the person 'has' to develope romantic relationships. This is simply not true. Rather than a guide on how to raise, it should remain psychology, which is ANALYSIS, not treatment or guidelines, which is how it is currently. Tyciol 16:47, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment from subpage

Obviously Developmental Psychology deals with becoming mature (psychologically). I often find people referring to this, His response was immature, or, Her behavior was mature.

I find this area needs careful examination and explanation - I suggests a topic of its own, although one may already exist. Often it involves Projection [[1]] and other defence mechanisms, but to cover this aspect properly I think it needs to be brought together under a healthy, rather than a patholigical, approach. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.11.233.243 (talk • contribs)

Template:Humandevelopment

Please see Template talk:Humandevelopment. -DoctorW 19:03, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The point of the Prenatal section, under Stages of development

I don't see any developmental psychology being discussed under the "Prenatal" section. It seems to be about prenatal physical development rather exclusively. Or is there a point I'm missing? Figma 20:11, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I have attempted to address this question, I hope the edit is useful. I thought the previous content related mostly to pre-natal development and was dealt with at length in other articles such as that one. Some content did not seem to relate clearly to Developmental psychology so removed. Finally Primitive reflexes covers the full list of reflexes in more depth, I hope the summary style is o.k. Comments welcomed.Finereach (talk) 21:47, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Order of entries in "Theorists & theories" section

Although it may be difficult to agree on an order, I've kept the cognitive theorists first (Piaget, Kohlberg, Bruner), followed by the "social context" theorists (Vygotsky, Bronfenbrenner), then Kagan, then the attachment theorists (Bowlby, Harlow, Ainsworth), and finally historical theories of development (Erikson, Freud). Please propose a rationale for significant changes. -DoctorW 00:00, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Gruber, 1977?

This is extensively cited, yet no link or reference is provided. I am having difficulty tracking down what study the article reference. Reaper Man

Language development in isolated deaf children

According to this article, Nicaraguan deaf children who were formerly isolated from other deaf people could not develop a true sign language on their own, but when brought to schools with others they invented their own language -- 'the "source of language is within us but that the conditions for its emergence depend crucially upon community."' http://www.signwriting.org/forums/research/rese004.html I'm not sure if this is worth including, or, if so, what to say about it. Any input? Sten for the win 00:28, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

on the origins of language you might look at Susanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, which is about symbol formation but contains refs to Wittgenstein, Cassirer etc and various anthropological studies. It is quite an old book (1940's) but the philosophical basis is there and can give an idea of what areas might have been developed subsequently. ArtLit 09:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Child Psychology

I don't think child psychology and developmental psychology are the same thing. Developmental psychology looks at the psychological forces that affect a person as he ages throughout the lifespan. Child psychology, while informed by developmental psychology, deals specifically with understanding the psychology of and treating pathologies in children. I do not believe that Child Psychology should redirect here. Steve carlson 04:35, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Improving this article

The current article looks like a mess to me. I guess we first need to clean it up a bit and then we can see where it can be expanded. I would opt for a (commonly made) distinction between physiological, cognitive, and social development. Also, we can distinguish between child development and life-span development (most of developmental psychology is aimed at children, but that's not its sole purpose anymore). Any thoughts? -- Cugel 08:14, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that parts of this article need major work, particularly the Early Childhood and Childhood headings, which cite no research of any kind, and are each only one paragraph in length. Possibly the Infancy section should be a model for the following sections, at least in terms of depth.

160.39.86.109 16:40, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

On the Removal of Ecological Systems Theory section

I've removed the Ecological Systems Theory section for several reasons. This is not a comment on the legitimacy of the theory, but an attempt to better organize this page.

The primary organizational structure of the page is by age: Infancy, Early Childhood, Childhood, etc. This is a useful way to organize, because under each heading, major positions in Dev. Psychology can be compared. If Ecological systems theory has a specific position on Infancy that differs from other theories, it could fit into this age-oriented organizational structure by adding, "Ecological Systems Theory, on the other hand, states that infants..."

A second reason for the removal is that the section does not suggest an experimental basis for the theory.

Dialectric 17:08, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

The second reason (lack of cited experimental evidence) is a legitimate complaint, but by that logic, why not delete the childhood and early childhood sections, as well? Lack of cited (but likely extant) evidence is a cause for putting in [citation needed] flags, not for deleting ideas wholesale.

The first reason is rubbish. There are clearly theories of development that pertain to the nature of development itself, regardless of age, or that divide up the lifespan in different ways than age. Ignoring whole branches of a field just to keep the headings of a page pretty is irresponsible and misleadingly reductionist.

Roles

Whilst it is only right that the role of fathers and new developments in that area should recieve proper attention, it does seem odd that the role of mothers only warrants four lines.Fainites ^barley 21:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Question

Way back I took a general psychology class, and we talked a bit about human development. I think we talked about a stage in which human children come to realize that a tool can be used in other ways besides the single function it was designed for. For example, a person might need to tighten a screw, but they don't have a screwdriver handy, so they use the tip of a butter knife or the side of a coin instead.

And I thought there was also a term for an impairment or disability in which a person lacked this understanding, and avoided using tools except for their primary function. So if they didn't have that screwdriver they wouldn't know what to do, they wouldn't be able to figure out that they could use something else.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Is it on wikipedia right in front of my face and I can't find it? I want to do some research into it.

Thanks.VatoFirme (talk) 06:11, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

-=-=-=-=-=-=- It is widely accepted however, that ACDC and other loud rock music is not good for an infant's state of mind either. Gimme a break! At least gimme a citation! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.40.217.217 (talk) 22:39, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Early childhood and onward

The focus on schooling is ethnocentric, but I hate screwing the article up with templates.

Somebody needs to sort that out. forestPIG^(grunt) 17:34, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Sensorimotor development detail

I have summarised this detail to Theory of cognitive development, where it has been for about a month with no objections. I have tried to preserve/integrate existing text in my edit. The rationale is to try to make the section more concise and put the detail in a directly relevant article. Finereach (talk) 09:56, 15 November 2009 (UTC)