History, Theories and Methods of Child Psychology

Chapter- 1

Dr. Kishor Roy

Associate Professor
Dept. of Psychology
Jagannath University
 References
• Clarke-Stewart,A., Frienman,S., and Koch, J. (1985).
Child Development A Topical Approach. copyright ©
1985, by John wiley of Sons, Inc.

• Santrock, J. W. (1997). Children .New York. McGraw

Hill.
As a scientific discipline with a firm empirical
basis, child study is of comparatively recent origin.
It was initiated in 1840, when Charles Darwin began
a record of the growth and development of one of his
own children.
 The Child Before the Science of Child Psychology

• Today a child is regarded as someone to be cherished,

a tender and precious human being who must be
nurtured and protected. A child’s development is
worthy of careful attention and scientific study.

• Views of Child Development:

• i) Original Sin View (16th to 17th Century)
• ii) Tabula Rasa View (End of 17th Century to 18th Century)
• iii) Innate Goodness View (18th Century)
i) Original Sin View (16th to 17th Century)

• Popular views of childhood in the 16th and 17th

centuries were radically different from those we
hold dear.
• Specific child-rearing practices in England and the
American colonies during this period were, to our
present way of thinking, cruel and inhumane.
• Rules for child behavior were not adapted to the
special needs and limitations of children, and children
were frequently beaten for any infraction.
• Before 1750 only one out of four children survived
to the age of 5 in the city of London.

• Brest feeding was considered vulgar/indecent; those

who could afford servants passed their infants to wet
nurses.

• There were no effective methods of birth control;

adults simply abandoned unwanted children or killer
them (Piers, 1978).
• In Paris, for every three births registered, one child
was abandoned. Record for Dublin during the 18th
century indicate that of 10,272 infants admitted to
one such home, only 45 survived (Kessen, 1965).
ii) Tabula Rasa View (End of 17th Century to 18th Century)

The idea that early experience could have a profound

effect on adult life was expressed forcefully in the
writings of physician and philosopher John Locke
(1632-1704).

Locke (1794) opposed the idea that children are

innately sinful. He proposed that the newborn child
was like a blank slate or tabula rasa upon which
experience would write in story.
iii) Innate Goodness View (18th Century)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), writing some 50

years after Locke’s death, further revolutionized
human thought about the child.
With the publication in 1762 of Emile, or a Treatise on
Education, Rousseau offered a view of childhood
that laid the basis for educational reform in his time
and that is still debate today.
If Locke was the first champion of nurture as the
force behind development, Rousseau was the first
outspoken proponent of nature.
• Even more than Locke, Rousseau believed in the
importance and uniqueness of childhood. He regarded
children as qualitatively different from adults, not
merely as incomplete adults or uniformed students.

1.3 The Scientific Forefather: Darwin

• Development was a central theme of his Origin of
Species, published in 1859. Species develop;
societies develop; human beings develop.
1.4 The Early 20th Century: Child Psychology
Becomes a Science

• G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924): Father of Child

Psychology
• He produced more than 400 books and papers:
Psychological investigations of Jesus Christ, sex, old
age, morality, music, physical education, and many
others.
• It was Hall who founded the American Journal of
Psychology, and it was he who taught men like
Thomas Dewey, Arnold Gessel, and Lewis Terman.
• Hall’s contributions to psychology, and specially
child and adolescent psychology, derived from his
dedication to developing the questionnaire as an
investigative tools.
• He wrote many papers on children, including “The
Contents of Children’s Mind,” and “A Study of
Dolls”.
• Hall oversaw more than 100 questionnaire studies
on many topics, yet he is criticized for having
neglected the rigors of the scientific method.
• In, 1904, Hall virtually created adolescence as a
subject of scientific inquiry with the publication of
his monumental, two-volume Adolescence.
• Hall depicted adolescence as a period of storm and
stress.

• Certain of Hall’s views were controversial. For his

interest in psychoanalysis and sex, his more
conservative peers never forgave him. Hall rarely
confident himself to a single theory or method- for
which he also has been criticized.
• It was in Franch, early in this century, that child
study become a science. Alfred Binet (1857-1911) &
Theophile Simon (1873-1961) develop the first
objective and standardized intelligence test, in
response to a practical problem confronting the
Franch School administration.
• Binet and Simon has established a method with the
virtues of objectively, quantification, and
standardization.
• Arnold Lucius Gesell (1880-1961) also relied on
systematic observations of many different children
at different ages, but he, unlike Biet and Simon,
develop his methods to provide a theoretical point.
• Some of his methods (e.g., the photographic dome, a
room within a room for observing children’s activities
without disturbing them).
• John Broadus Watson (1878-1958); Between 1913
and 1920, The approach known as behaviorism was
born. “Psychology as the behaviorist views it,” wrote
Watson in 1913, “is a purely objective experimental
branch of natural science.
• He says, child behavior can be modified (Albart’s
exp.).
• As a result of their success at modifying children’s
behavior in such experiments, Watson and his
followers took a strong stand in claiming that
development is environmentally determined.
• Gesell was reassuring parents that children with
problems world outgrow their temporary
disequilibrium, Watson was changing parents with
complete and total responsibility for any fear,
misbehavior, or other negative conditioning they
might perpetrate.
• Watson may have left parents with an unreasonable
view of their responsibilities, but he endowed child
study with something valuable, an experimental
method.
• Sigmund Freud (1854-1939) was preparing Three
Contributions to the Sexual Theory, first published
in Vienna in 1905, then translated and published in
America in 1910. This work exploded previous
conceptions of children by ascribing to them a sexual
life, a sexual drive right from the beginning.
• A child, as depicted by Freud, was dramatic and
complicated. Conflict was present at every stage of
development. Even though we “forget” or repress,
these conflicts, they determine our entire
development.
• Not only did Freud draw parallels between early
physical pleasure and later sexual satisfaction, he
also insisted that early sexual experiences influences
adult behavior.
• In addition to his theory of psychosexual
development, Freud established a method of treating
psychiatric patients called psychoanalysis.

• Critics of Freud’s theory of development have argued

that the lives of the bourgeois European patients
from which he drew his information are of little help
in charting “normal” development in childhood.
1.5 The Middle 20th Century: Theories of Child Development.

• In 1930 to 1960, First generation of social learning

theorists was John Dollard, Neal Miller & Robert
Sears.
• Erik Erikson (1902 –1994) was a German-American
developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for
his theory on psychological development of human
beings.
• Jean Piaget, (1896- 1980), Swiss psychologist who was
the first to make a systematic study of the acquisition of
understanding in children. He is thought by many to have
been the major figure in 20th-century developmental
psychology.
1.6 Methods of Child Study

• As the theoretical explanations of child development have

changed and multiplied, so, too, have ways of studying
children.
• Today the child development researcher can choose from
a wide range of diverse methods, measures, and
procedures.
• Designing and conducting a study is a series of choices.
There is no one right way, no guaranteed method.
Although each choice has its own advantages and
limitations.
 Methods of Child Study

• The first choice is to select a research design.

• There are two major ways to comparing children at
different ages in order to study development. One is
longitudinal; the same population of children is followed
over an extended period of time to see how it changes
with age.
• The other is cross-sectional; the investigators choose as
subjects groups of children who are similar in important
ways-educational level, socioeconomic status, proportion
of males to females-but who are of different ages, and
they determine how the groups compare.
• From cross-sectional studies, results are gathered more
quickly and provide at least a rough outline of
development
 Methods of Child Study

• If the researcher wishes to determine how a particular

condition affects children’s behavior, there are several
methods from which to select. First, the researcher may
choose to do an experiment.
• In an experiment, one group of children, the
experimental group, is treated in a special way; another,
the control group, is not. Children are assigned in one
group or the other at random.
• When a controlled experiment with randomly assigned
subjects is not possible, the investigator may be able to
find a natural experiment. One group of subjects who
are in real life exposed to a particular condition are
compared with another group of subjects, similar in every
other way, who are not exposed to such a condition.
 Methods of Child Study

• It is not ethical to assign children randomly to

experimental conditions of deprivation, for example,
children in orphanages may be thought of as the
experimental group is a natural experiment and compared
to children raised at home.
• Observational research is another option. When using
this method, the researcher does not manipulate or select
a situation for the behavior in which he or she is
interested, but instead systematically observes its
occurrence in different children.
• The children may be observed in the natural setting of
home or school or in a standard or structured play
situation in the laboratory.
 Methods of Child Study

• The researcher may also choose to use standard test,

such as those of intelligence, or to conduct interviews
with children, parents, and teachers.
• After the research has been done, investigators must
analyze the data obtained. They can look for correlations
or associations between variables. For example, they can
see whether children who are highly intelligent also have
considerable athletic ability; if do, the two variables of
intelligence and athletic ability are positively correlated.