Hi i am trying to find out the historical cotext of developmental psychology, was it Piaget? Who did it begin with? Thank you.

-- Linda Cleary (dizlinda@aol.com), March 07, 2003

Answers

I don't think there was any single moment of its beginning, but it certainly predates Piaget. You'll find that a number of the 19th century American psychologistswere doing work on development -- particularly G. Stanley Hall (who popularized the term "adolescence" with his book so entitled) and James Mark Baldwin (from whom Piaget ultimately derived some of his insights). There was, of course, Alfred Binet in France as well.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), March 07, 2003.

Hi Christopher, thank you. What would you recommend, i need to insert some kind of historical context into an essay on cognitive and moral development. Thank you.

-- Linda Cleary (dizlinda@aol.com), March 07, 2003.

I don't know this areas well, so all I can tell you is that if *I* were doing this project I'd look at Hall's and Baldwin's major books to see what they have to say about moral development. You should also probably look through a developmental text to see what they say about theories of moral development prior to Kohlberg.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), March 07, 2003.

There's some decent overview material on others besides Hall and Baldwin in the David Leary and Sigmunc Koch's A Century of Psychology as Science (McGraw-Hill, 1985; American Psychological Association, 1992). The following books will also be helpful, especially the original essays collected in Dennis.

1972 Dennis, Wayne (Ed.) Historical Readings in Developmental Psychology New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts 1983 Lerner, Richard M. Developmental Psychology: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates 1985 Eckardt, Georg; Bringmann, Wolfgang G.; & Sprung, Lothar (Eds.) Contributions to a History of Developmental Psychology: International William T. Preyer Symposium Berlin; New York: Mouton 1996 Thompson, Dennis & Hogan, John D. A History of Developmental Psychology in Autobiography Boulder, CO: Westview Press

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), March 08, 2003.

Vygotsky, a contemporary of Piaget's, had an alternative view of both cognitive and moral development. As you may know Carol Gilligan as well as the Stone Center developmental theorists (Jean Baker Miller, for example)have an alternative perspective. The book: "The Young Child as Person: Toward the Development of Healthy Conscience" gives the background and experiential support for a more relational perspective. Also I have a recent speech on "Conscience Development at the University of New Mexico. Both the speech and the book are available on my website: www. onbecominghuman.com. I am currently reading "The Scientist in the Crib" which gives an overview of the history of developmental psychology as well as recent research such as Daniel Stern's.

-- Maryhelen Snyder (mel@onbecominghuman.com), July 25, 2004.