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Frontal and occipital brain glutathione levels are unchanged in autistic adults

Andreia C. Pereira, Alison Leonard,  [ ... ], Gráinne M. McAlonan

Exploring context for implementation of inclusive education for children with developmental disabilities in mainstream primary schools in Ethiopia

Elisa Genovesi, Ikram Ahmed,  [ ... ], Rosa Anna Hoekstra

Screening accuracy and cut-offs of the Polish version of Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales-Developmental Profile Infant-Toddler Checklist

Mateusz Sobieski, Anna Kopszak, Sylwia Wrona, Maria Magdalena Bujnowska-Fedak

Fallacy of attributing the U.S. firearm mortality epidemic to mental health

Archie Bleyer, Stuart E. Siegel, Jaime Estrada, Charles R. Thomas Jr.

The effectiveness of group interpersonal synchrony in young autistic adults’ work environment: A mixed methods RCT study protocol

Tamar Dvir, Tal-Chen Rabinowitch, Cochavit Elefant

Individual differences and motor planning influence self-recognition of actions

Akila Kadambi, Qi Xie, Hongjing Lu

Focus-marking in a tonal language: Prosodic differences between Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorder

Si Chen, Yixin Zhang,  [ ... ], Zhuoming Chen

Brain activations during execution and observation of visually guided sequential manual movements in autism and in typical development: A study protocol

Erik Domellöf, Hanna Hjärtström,  [ ... ], Daniel Säfström

The investigation of dysregulated visual perceptual organization in adults with autism spectrum disorders with phase-amplitude coupling and directed connectivity

“I am afraid of being treated badly if I show it”: A cross-sectional study of healthcare accessibility and Autism Health Passports among UK Autistic adults

Aimee Grant, Sarah Turner,  [ ... ], Amy Brown

Infant vocal category exploration as a foundation for speech development

Hyunjoo Yoo, Pumpki Lei Su,  [ ... ], D. Kimbrough Oller

Stress in autism (STREAM): A study protocol on the role of circadian activity, sleep quality and sensory reactivity

Clara C. Gernert, Christine M. Falter-Wagner,  [ ... ], Tristan A. Bekinschtein

Visual statistical learning in preverbal infants at a higher likelihood of autism and its association with later social communication skills

Roberta Bettoni, Chiara Cantiani,  [ ... ], Valentina Riva

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Navigating an Unforeseen Pathway

This article describes a career path from a non-traditional STEM field to an impactful career in developmental science. It acknowledges the unique experiences of an African American woman growing up in a northeastern urban center at the end of World War II, during which the experiences of Blacks were still heavily impacted by policies and practices representing highly significant racial inequities requiring individual, family, and collective coping. My human development theory, phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST), provides a framing device for describing both high vulnerability situations and resilience expressions linked to particular contextual experiences including significant challenges and, as well, unexpected sources of support. Experiences had within my family of origin, civil rights activities, and diverse learning environments afforded supports, inferred mortal attacks, and unexpected opportunities. Ongoing are challenges and stress inferred to be associated with my committed positionality that acknowledges all children's humanity and particularly the persistent situations of youth and communities of color.

Prenatal Substance Exposure

This is an evaluative review of the field of prenatal substance exposure, with a focus on neurobiological and behavioral outcomes from infancy to young adulthood. We provide an overall evaluation of the state of the field and comment on current conceptual and methodological issues in need of attention. Although there are many studies of prenatal substance exposure, developmental frameworks that incorporate and reflect the lived experiences of children and families have seldom been employed in this field. In addition, although there are some common effects (e.g., on fetal growth) between major substances, there are also unique effects. Thus, we discuss the role of specific substances but note that polysubstance exposure is common, and models and methods used to date may not be sufficient to advance understanding of coexposure or polyexposure effects. We discuss these conceptual and methodological weaknesses and provide suggestions for future directions.

Neurodevelopment of Attention, Learning, and Memory Systems in Infancy

Understanding how we come to make sense of our environments requires understanding both how we take in new information and how we flexibly process and store that information in memory for subsequent retrieval. In other words, infant cognitive development research is best served by studies that probe infant attention as well as infant learning and memory development. In this article, we first review what is known about infant attention and what is known about a selection of learning systems available in infancy. Then, we review what is known about the interactions between attention and these systems, focusing on infancy when possible but highlighting relevant child and adult literatures when infant research is yet scarce. Finally, we close by proposing a path forward, which we believe will result in a clearer understanding of the interactions between attention and memory that govern infant learning.

The Representation of Third-Party Helping Interactions in Infancy

Despite numerous findings on the sophisticated inferences that human infants draw from observing third-party helping interactions, currently there is no theoretical account of how infants come to understand such events in the first place. After reviewing the available evidence in infants, we describe an account of how human adults understand helping actions. According to this mature concept, helping is a second-order, goal-directed action aiming to increase the utility of another agent (the Helpee) via reducing the cost, or increasing the reward, of the Helpee's own goal-directed action. We then identify the cognitive prerequisites for conceiving helping in this way and ask whether these are available to infants in the interpretation of helping interactions. In contrast to the mature concept, we offer two simpler alternatives that may underlie the early understanding of helping actions: ( a ) helping as enabling, which requires second-order goal attribution but no utility calculus, and ( b ) helping as joint action, which requires efficiency (i.e., utility) evaluation without demanding second-order goal attribution. We evaluate the evidence supporting these accounts, derive unique predictions from them, and describe what developmental pathway toward the mature concept they envisage. We conclude the article by outlining further open questions that the developmental literature on the interpretation of helping interactions has not yet addressed.

A Developmental Social Neuroscience Perspective on Infant Autism Interventions

Research on early biomarkers and behavioral precursors of autism has led to interventions initiated during the infant period that could potentially change the course of infant brain and behavioral development in autism. This article integrates neuroscience and clinical perspectives to explore how knowledge of infant brain and behavioral development can inform the design of infant autism interventions. Focusing on infants ≤12 months, we review studies on behavioral precursors of autism and their neural correlates and clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of infant autism interventions. We then consider how contemporary developmental social neuroscience theories of autism can shed light on the therapeutic strategies used in infant autism interventions and offer a new perspective that emphasizes improving child outcome and well-being by enhancing infant–environment fit. Finally, we offer recommendations for future research that incorporates brain-based measures to inform individualized approaches to intervention and discuss ethical issues raised by infant autism interventions. Readers are referred to Supplemental Table 1 for a glossary of terms used in this article.

Intervening Early: Socioemotional Interventions Targeting the Parent–Infant Relationship

Responsive, nurturing parenting helps infants and young children develop secure, organized attachments as well as adequate self-regulatory capabilities. However, when parents experience challenges, they often have difficulty providing responsive, nurturing care. In this article, we provide an overview of interventions that have been developed to enhance parental responsiveness, and we discuss in detail three interventions that have particularly strong evidence of effectiveness. For each intervention, we describe the intervention's purported mechanism and the evidence supporting its engagement as well as proximal and distal intervention outcomes. The three interventions described vary in duration from 6 to 32 sessions on average and are variously implemented in the home or office. Nonetheless, all three interventions have strong evidence of effectiveness in engaging the intervention mechanism of parental responsiveness and show impressive effects on children's attachment and self-regulatory capabilities. We also discuss challenges in disseminating interventions in the community.

Growing Up, Learning Race: An Integration of Research on Cognitive Mechanisms and Socialization in Context

In the United States, race is a critical factor in determining how children experience and navigate their social worlds. Developmental scientists have examined the complexities and nuances of how children develop an understanding of what race means for them and others as well as their attitudes toward people of other racial groups. We provide an overview of the literature on two approaches to understanding children's racial learning—sociocognitive approaches, which focus on various aspects of children's understanding of, beliefs about, and attitudes toward race and racial groups, and socialization perspectives, which examine the messages that socialization agents transmit to children about race. Throughout, we highlight the ways in which the persistence of structural and interpersonal racism in the United States forms the background context for children's racial learning.

Social Identities and Intersectionality: A Conversation About the What and the How of Development

Research on the development of social identities in early and middle childhood has largely focused on gender; increasingly, however, theory and research have addressed the development of ethnic/racial, social class, sexual, and immigrant identities. Moreover, it is assumed that individuals’ thinking about and articulating of the intersectionality between their social identities emerge in adolescence and young adulthood, but a growing body of work has shown that minoritized children conceptualize their intersectional identities by middle childhood. This article reviews that work and addresses how interdisciplinary scholarship and quantitative and qualitative methodologies can deepen our understanding of the development of social identities and intersectionality. We take a contextual approach to investigate how relational and cultural contexts contour the socialization of social and intersectional identities. Most of our review focuses on theory and research in the United States; however, because we aim to consider immigrant identity, we also include theory and research on how immigrant families and communities help minoritized children and youth navigate their identities in schools and communities and cope with discrimination.

Children's Acquisition and Application of Norms

All human societies are permeated by collectively shared entities that govern daily social interactions and promote coordination and cooperation: norms. While the study of norm development is not new to developmental psychology, it has only recently been the target of an interdisciplinary wave of research using new methodologies and (often) complementary theoretical accounts to describe and explain the origins and potentially species-unique aspects of human norm psychology. Here we review recent developmental research showing that young children swiftly acquire and infer norms in a variety of social contexts. Moreover, children actively enforce these norms, even as unaffected bystanders, when third parties do things the wrong way. This research suggests that the foundations of human norm psychology can be found in early childhood. Deeper insights into the ontogenetic roots of norm psychology may contribute to understanding the evolutionary emergence of human cooperation and its maintenance in the contemporary world.

A Rational Account of Cognitive Control Development in Childhood

Cognitive control is defined as a set of processes required for the organization of goal-directed thoughts and actions. It is linked to success throughout life including health, wealth, and social capital. How to support the development of cognitive control is therefore an intensively discussed topic. Progress in understanding how this critical life skill can be optimally scaffolded in long-lasting ways has been disappointing. I argue that this effort has been hampered by the predominant perspective that cognitive control is a competence or ability, the development of which is driven by predetermined maturational sequences. I propose that this traditional view needs to be overhauled in light of a growing body of evidence suggesting that cognitive control allocation is a both highly dynamic and rational process subject to cost–benefit analyses from early in development. I discuss the ramifications of shifting our perspective on cognitive control mechanisms in relation to how we design interventions. I close by spelling out new avenues for scientific inquiry.

Two-Hit Model of Behavioral Inhibition and Anxiety

Four decades of research have examined the antecedents and consequences of behavioral inhibition (BI), a temperament profile associated with heightened reactivity to sensory stimuli in infancy, reticence toward social cues in childhood, and the later emergence of social anxiety in adolescence. This review proposes that a two-hit model can supplement prior work to better understand these developmental pathways. Specifically, time limited experiences (“hits”) centered in infancy and adolescence stress idiosyncratic BI-linked processes that uniquely trigger the developmental pathway from temperament to disorder. To illustrate, we focus on caregiver distress in infancy (including fetal development), social reorientation in adolescence, and their impact on malleable attentional and cognitive systems. These are developmental challenges and processes that go to the heart of the BI phenotype. Finally, we note open questions in this conceptual model, potential caveats, and needed future research.

Developmental Neuroimaging of Cognitive Flexibility: Update and Future Directions

Cognitive flexibility, or the ability to mentally switch between tasks according to changing environmental demands, supports optimal life outcomes, making it an important executive function to study across development. Here we review the literature examining the development of cognitive flexibility, with an emphasis on studies using task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The neuroimaging literature suggests that key brain regions important for cognitive flexibility include the inferior frontal junction and regions within the midcingulo-insular network, including the insular and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices. We further discuss challenges surrounding studying cognitive flexibility during neurodevelopment, including inconsistent terminology, the diversity of fMRI task paradigms, difficulties with isolating cognitive flexibility from other executive functions, and accounting for developmental changes in cognitive strategy. Future directions include assessing how developmental changes in brain network dynamics enable cognitive flexibility and examining potential modulators of cognitive flexibility including physical activity and bilingualism.

A Neuroecosocial Perspective on Adolescent Development

Adolescence is a period of life that encompasses biological maturation and profound change in social roles. It is also a period associated with the onset of mental health problems. The field of developmental cognitive neuroscience has advanced our understanding of the development of the brain within its immediate social and cultural context. In a time of rising rates of mental health problems among adolescents across the globe, it is important to understand how the wider societal, structural, and cultural contexts of young people are impacting their biological and social-cognitive maturation. In this article, we review the landscape of youth mental health and brain development during adolescence and consider the potential role of brain research in understanding the effects of current social determinants of adolescent mental health, including socioeconomic inequality, city living, and eco-anxiety about the climate crisis.

Poverty, Brain Development, and Mental Health: Progress, Challenges, and Paths Forward

Poverty is associated with changes in brain development and elevates the risk for psychopathology in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Although the field is rapidly expanding, there are methodological challenges that raise questions about the validity of current findings. These challenges include the interrelated issues of reliability, effect size, interindividual heterogeneity, and replicability. To address these issues, we propose a multipronged approach that spans short-, medium-, and long-term solutions, including changes to data pipelines along with more comprehensive data acquisition of environment, brain, and mental health. Additional suggestions are to use open science approaches, more robust statistical analyses, and replication testing. Furthermore, we propose increased integration between advanced analytical approaches using large samples and neuroscience models in intervention research to enhance the interpretability of findings. Collectively, these approaches will expand the application of neuroimaging findings and provide a foundation for eventual policy changes designed to improve conditions for children in poverty.

The Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD): Studying Development from Infancy to Adulthood

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) is a comprehensive study of human development that has followed participants from birth ( N = 1,364) to age 26 ( N = 814). Observations, diagnostic procedures, standardized tests, and questionnaires were used to measure five developmental contexts (early care and education, home, school, out of school, and neighborhoods) and three developmental domains (social–emotional, cognitive–academic, and physical–biological). Measures were repeated over time so that stability, change, and growth trajectories of both contexts and developmental domains could be studied. The goals of this review are threefold: ( a ) to acquaint readers with the depth and breadth of measures available in this public data set, ( b ) to provide an overview of longitudinal findings that extend the SECCYD to the end of high school and age 26, and ( c ) to highlight promising areas for future research.

Bridging the Divide: Tackling Tensions Between Life-Course Epidemiology and Causal Inference

Life-course epidemiologists have developed sophisticated models for how exposures throughout life—from gestation to old age—shape health, sometimes years after the exposure occurred. The field, however, has been slow to adopt robust causal inference methods, including quasi-experimental designs. This reflects, at least in part, a tension between ( a ) study designs that maximize our ability to make causal claims and ( b ) exposure operationalizations that correspond with life-course theories. In this narrative review, we attempt to mitigate that tension. We first discuss the unique challenges for causal inference in life-course epidemiology. We then outline how quasi-experimental methods have already contributed to testing life-course theories, as well as the limitations of the quasi-experimental methods therein. We close with solutions that bridge the gap between modern developments in causal inference and life-course epidemiology, including redefined estimands to maximize public health impact; marginal structural and structural nested models; longitudinal instrumental variables approaches; leveraging new data linkages, such as with detailed residential histories; and triangulation across methods, including adopting a pluralistic approach to causal inference.

The Functioning of Offspring of Depressed Parents: Current Status, Unresolved Issues, and Future Directions

Although the intergenerational transmission of risk for depression is well documented, the mechanisms and moderators involved in this transmission of risk from depressed parents to their offspring are not clear. In this review, we discuss the progress that has been made over the past two decades in studying offspring of depressed parents and describe the maladaptive characteristics of these offspring in a diverse range of domains, including clinical, cognitive, and biological functioning. Despite recent advances in this area, there are unresolved questions that warrant further investigation involving the nature of risk transmission from parent to offspring, the specificity of findings to depression, and the role of factors that often accompany depression. We discuss these issues and offer directions for future research that we believe will move the field forward in gaining a better understanding of the relation between parental depression and altered psychobiological functioning in their offspring.

Emotion Regulation in Couples Across Adulthood

Intimate relationships are hotbeds of emotion. This article presents key findings and current directions in research on couples’ emotion regulation across adulthood as a critical context in which older adults not only maintain functioning but may also outshine younger adults. First, I introduce key concepts, defining qualities (i.e., dynamic, coregulatory, bidirectional, bivalent), and measures (i.e., self-report versus performance-based) of couples’ emotion regulation. Second, I highlight a socioemotional turn in our understanding of adult development with the advent of socioemotional selectivity theory. Third, I offer a life-span developmental perspective on emotion regulation in couples (i.e., across infancy, adolescence and young adulthood, midlife, and late life). Finally, I present the idea that emotion regulation may shift from “me to us” across adulthood and discuss how emotion regulation in couples may become more important, better, and increasingly consequential (e.g., for relationship outcomes, well-being, and health) with age. Ideas for future research are then discussed.

Volume 5 (2023)

Volume 4 (2022), volume 3 (2021), volume 2 (2020), volume 1 (2019), volume 0 (1932).

Articles on Developmental psychology

Displaying 1 - 20 of 33 articles.

Here’s why you may not be getting the benefits you expected from mindfulness

Nathaniel Johnson , Simon Fraser University and Hali Kil , Simon Fraser University

What is pathological demand avoidance – and how is it different to ‘acting out’?

Nicole Rinehart , Monash University ; David Moseley , Monash University , and Michael Gordon , Monash University

From viral social media ‘pranks’ to hooning, what makes teens behave so badly?

Kathryn Daley , RMIT University

Advertising toys to children is an environmental nightmare – here’s how parents can deal with it

Michelle Cowley-Cunningham , Dublin City University

Secure attachment to both parents − not just mothers − boosts children’s healthy development

Or Dagan , Long Island University Post and Carlo Schuengel , Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Children, like adults, tend to underestimate how welcome their random acts of kindness will be

Margaret Echelbarger , Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)

At what age are people usually happiest? New research offers surprising clues

Clare Mehta , Emmanuel College

10 parenting strategies to reduce your kids’ pandemic stress

Amanda Sheffield Morris , Oklahoma State University and Jennifer Hays-Grudo , Oklahoma State University

Teens are wired to resent being stuck with parents and cut off from friends during coronavirus lockdown

Catherine Bagwell , Emory University

Isolating together is challenging – and relationship stresses can affect biological functioning

Hannah L. Schacter , Wayne State University

Knowledge is a process of discovery: how constructivism changed education

Luke Zaphir , The University of Queensland

Grudges come naturally to kids – gratitude must be taught

Nadia Chernyak , University of California, Irvine ; Peter Blake , Boston University , and Yarrow Dunham , Yale University

Father’s Day: Lesser-known ways dads improve children’s lives

Audrey-Ann Deneault , L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

Adolescents have a fundamental need to contribute

Andrew J. Fuligni , University of California, Los Angeles

Children are natural optimists – which comes with psychological pros and cons

Janet J. Boseovski , University of North Carolina – Greensboro

When can you buy a gun, vote or be sentenced to death? Science suggests US should revise legal age limits

Laurence Steinberg , Temple University

Teens aren’t just risk machines – there’s a method to their madness

Jessica Flannery , University of Oregon ; Elliot Berkman , University of Oregon , and Jennifer Pfeifer , University of Oregon

More children are starting school depressed and anxious – without help, it will only get worse

Dr Amelia Shay , Australian Catholic University and Cen Wang , Charles Sturt University

Lies about Santa? They could be good for your child

Kristen Dunfield , Concordia University

For baby’s brain to benefit, read the right books at the right time

Lisa S. Scott , University of Florida

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• Published: 20 October 2023

Developmental psychology: The expanding reach of emotions

• Jennifer A. Bellingtier 1  

Communications Psychology volume  1 , Article number:  29 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Development studies

For some individuals, daily changes in positive and negative emotions corresponds to fluctuations in overall life satisfaction. A new study in Psychology and Aging suggests that the expanding reach of negative emotions is greater for younger than older adults.

Emotions are typically transient feelings that fluctuate from day to day whereas evaluations of life-satisfaction have traditionally been thought to be relatively more stable. Emerging research suggests that for some individuals emotion fluctuations are also associated with daily changes in global life satisfaction, a phenomenon known as emotion globalizing.

Meaghan A. Barlow at Wilfrid Laurier University and colleagues investigated if the tendency to expand the reach of daily emotions was more pronounced in younger versus older adults 1 . Across two studies, they tracked positive and negative emotions either at the end of the day or following the day’s most stressful event as well as either global life satisfaction or satisfaction with the current day. They found that younger adults (ages 23–42 and 18–34), as compared to older adults (ages 51–79 and 64–95), were more likely to link their current-day negative emotions with more negative overall life evaluations. There were no age-related differences in the tendency to globalize positive emotions to either life or day satisfaction or negative emotions to day satisfaction. Interestingly, overall life satisfaction did not differ on average based on age, although average day satisfaction was higher for older adults.

These findings align with lifespan developmental theories suggesting that older age is associated with accrued wisdom and an improved ability to manage daily negative events. The ability to keep negative emotions from expanding may be one way older adults maintain life satisfaction into their later years.

Barlow, M. A., Willroth, E. C., Wrosch, C., John, O. P., & Mauss, I. B. When daily emotions spill into life satisfaction: age differences in emotion globalizing. Psychol. Aging https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000771 (2023).

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Bellingtier, J.A. Developmental psychology: The expanding reach of emotions. Commun Psychol 1 , 29 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00029-6

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The Place of Development in the History of Psychology and Cognitive Science

In this article, I analyze how the relationship of developmental psychology with general psychology and cognitive science has unfolded. This historical analysis will provide a background for a critical examination of the present state of the art. I shall argue that the study of human mind is inherently connected with the study of its development. From the beginning of psychology as a discipline, general psychology and developmental psychology have followed parallel and relatively separated paths. This separation between adult and child studies has also persisted with the emergence of cognitive science. The reason is due essentially to methodological problems that have involved not only research methods but also the very object of inquiry. At present, things have evolved in many ways. Psychology and cognitive science have enlarged their scope to include change process and the interaction between mind and environment. On the other hand, the possibility of using experimental methods to study infancy has allowed us to realize the complexity of young humans. These facts have paved the way for new possibilities of convergence, which are eliciting interesting results, despite a number of ongoing problems related to methods.

Introduction

In this paper, I intend to analyze how the relationship of developmental psychology to general psychology and cognitive science has unfolded. This historical analysis will provide a background for a critical examination of the present state of the art.

Psychology emerged as a scientific discipline with the founding of Wundt’s Laboratory in Leipzig at the end of the nineteenth century (1879) 1 . Wundt’s method, both experimental and introspective, was directed to the study of an adult’s mind and behavior. It is less well-known that only 10 years later, James Baldwin, who had attended Wundt’s seminars in Germany, founded a laboratory of experimental psychology in Toronto in which experiments devoted to the study of mental development were performed. If the occasion that aroused Baldwin’s interest was the birth of his first daughter, actually, “that interest in the problems of genesis–origin, development, evolution–became prominent; the interest which was to show itself in all the subsequent years” ( Baldwin, 1930 ). Baldwin’s work was a source of inspiration for Piaget, certainly one of the most prominent figures in developmental psychology ( Morgan and Harris, 2015 ).

From the origins of psychology as a discipline, general psychology and developmental psychology have followed parallel and relatively separate paths. Two questions are particularly relevant to explain this fact.

From a theoretical point of view, developmental psychology has all along been greatly influenced by biology and evolutionary theory. The founders of developmental psychology have widely analyzed the relation between ontogenesis and phylogenesis ( Baldwin, 1895 ; Piaget, 1928 ). This analysis resulted in accepting the challenge of explaining development in a broad sense. In his autobiography, Baldwin affirms that already in the 10 years that he spent in Princeton between 1893 and 1903, where he founded another laboratory of experimental psychology, “the new interest in genetic psychology and general biology had become absorbing, and the meagerness of the results of the psychological laboratories (apart from direct work on sensation and movement) was becoming evident everywhere.” Thus, developmental psychology has followed an approach that in general psychology appeared much later 2 .

A second question regards method. Developmental researchers, while manifesting their attachment to experimental procedures, have been confronted with their insufficiency in the study of development. Both for deontological and practical reasons, many aspects of development, in particular in infants and young children, can hardly be investigated experimentally. Thus, a great number of studies in developmental psychology make use of observational methods based on different techniques such as ethnographic methods or parent reports, and the reliability of these methods has been questioned.

This relative separation between studies of adults and children has also persisted with the emergence of cognitive science. Actually, the primary aim of cognitive science, at least at the outset, was to model what we could call an adult static mind. Given a certain output, for instance an action, the task of the psychologist was to reconstruct the inference processes that were at the origin of this same action.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, psychology and cognitive science have enlarged their scope to include change processes and the interaction between mind and environment, including other minds. Developmental psychology, for its part, has developed nonverbal methods such as looking measures and choice measures that also make it possible to carry out experiments with infants. These facts have paved the way for new possibilities of convergence, which are eliciting interesting results, despite a number of ongoing problems related to methods.

Psychology, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence

The beginning of cognitive science.

According to the American psychologist George Miller, cognitive science was born on September 11, 1956, the second day of the Second Symposium on Information Theory held at MIT. That day began with a paper read by Allen Newell and Herbert Simon on the state of art of the Logic Theory Machine: a proof on computer of theorem 2.01 of Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica . That very same day ended with the first version of Chomsky’s The Structures of Syntax . Miller left the symposium convinced that experimental psychology, theoretical linguistics, and computer simulation of cognitive processes could become parts of a wider whole and that the future of research would be found in the elaboration of this composite whole (reported in Bruner, 1983a ). It is Miller who in 1960, together with Eugene Galanter and Karl Pribram, authored a text that may be considered the manifesto of cognitive science and that proclaimed the encompassing of cognitive psychology within the more general framework of information processing ( Miller et al., 1960 ). The assumption was that newly born information science could provide a unifying framework for the study of cognitive systems ( Schank and Abelson, 1977 ).

From a theoretical point of view, the core of this project is the concept of representation. Intentional mental states, such as beliefs and perceptions, are defined as relations to mental representations. The semantic properties of mental representations explain intentionality ( Pitt, 2017 ). Representations can be computed and thus constitute the basis for some forms of logic systems. According to the Cognitive Science Committee (1978) , which drew up a research project for the Sloan Foundation, all those disciplines, which belong to cognitive science, share the common goal of investigating the representational and computational capacities of the mind and the structural and functional realization of these capacities in the brain.

This point of view constitutes the foundation for what has been called functionalism in the philosophy of mind, i.e., the hypothesis that what defines the mind are those features that are independent of its natural realization. The classic functionalist stance is expressed by Pylyshyn in his book on computation and cognition ( Pylyshyn, 1984 ). He maintains that a clear distinction must be made between the functional architecture of the cognitive system and the rules and representations that the system employs.

Functionalism has been greatly discussed and criticized from the beginning ( Block, 1978 ; Dreyfus, 1979 ). Harnad (1990) identified what has been defined as the symbol grounding problem : “How can the semantic interpretation of a formal symbol system be made intrinsic to the system?”

The most exhaustive and most deeply argued critique of functionalism was advanced by Searle, who developed his arguments over time, publishing a number of essays which have given rise to heated debate ( Searle, 1980 , 1990 , 1992 ). The position taken up by functionalism is that the relationship between the brain and its products, that is to say conscious processes, is mediated by an intermediate level of unconscious rules. This intermediate level is, for functionalists, the level of the program. It is postulated that the rules are computational and that, consequently, the aim of research in cognitive science is to reconstruct these rules. Searle’s objection is that there are only two types of natural phenomena, the brain and the mental states that the brain brings into being and that humans experience. The brain produces mental states due to its specific biological characteristics. When we postulate the existence of unconscious rules, according to Searle, we invent a construct whose aim is to highlight a function, which we believe is especially significant. Such a function is not intrinsic and has no causal power. This argument is particularly interesting because it is founded on the impassable biological nature of the mind. Neither logic nor mathematical or statistical procedures may replace brain as a biological organ.

From another perspective, some scholars have emphasized that functionalism leads to a new form of behaviorism. Putnam (1988) claimed that reducing mental processes exclusively to their functional descriptions is tantamount to describe such processes in behavioristic terms 3 . In psychology, one of the most polemical critics of functionalism as a dangerous vehicle toward a new form of anti-mentalism, which would render vain all the battles waged by cognitivists against classic behaviorism, was a developmental psychologist, Bruner (1990) . The centrality of computability as the criterion for the construction of models in cognitive science leads naturally, in Bruner’s opinion, to abandoning “meaning making,” which was the central concern of the “Cognitive Revolution.”

Thus, at least at the outset, cognitive science was devoted to constructing computational models of human inference processes and of the knowledge that is used in performing these inferences. This definition of the object of cognitive science has led at first to designing and implementing problem-solving systems, where the complexity was located in the inference mechanisms, supposed to be the same for all problems ( Newell and Simon, 1972 ). Later, systems were implemented where reasoning was associated with specific and articulated knowledge representation ( Levesque and Brachman, 1985 ).

Notably, the aspect that was absent from this view of cognitive science was learning. This lack, according to Gentner (2010) , could be partly explained as a reaction to behaviorism, which was completely centered on learning. In fact, there were also philosophical reasons. Chomsky and Fodor, who were among the most influential members of the cognitive science community, were highly critical of the concept of learning. In their view, learning as a general mechanism does not exist, and Fodor even went so far as to state explicitly that no theory of development exists either ( Fodor, 1985 ).

Thus, cognitive science was born essentially as a reaction to behaviorism and took its legitimacy from the use of methodologies developed within artificial intelligence. These methodologies were supposed to make explicit how mental representations produced human activity in specific domains. However, this approach had a price: it separated the mind from its biological basis and from the context in which human activity takes place. There was no place for development, interaction, and variation due to biological or social causes 4 . This theoretical choice explains Bruner’s disillusion. For Bruner, cognitive science had fallen back into the behaviorism against which it originated, and no interesting relation could be established with developmental psychology. Developmental psychology is founded on the premise that a human being develops in interaction with the physical world and the society of other humans.

Cognitive Science in the Twenty-First Century

Cognitive science has changed considerably from its beginning. An obvious novelty concerns the increased importance assumed by learning with the emergence of connectionism ( Hinton, 1989 ).

When connectionist models were introduced, there was much debate regarding the relation of neural networks with the functioning of the human brain and their ability to address higher forms of thought ( Fodor and Pylyshyn, 1988 ; Quinlan, 1991 ; Chalmers, 1993 ). Later, philosophical discussion was replaced by empirical considerations. Networks are an efficient computational tool in some domains and are often used jointly with symbolic computations ( Wermter and Sun, 2000 ). Moreover, in recent advancements of artificial Intelligence, neural networks have been largely replaced by a variety of techniques of statistical learning ( Forbus, 2010 ).

More interesting for my purpose is the changes that the general philosophy of cognitive science has undergone due to the problems that have emerged with classic symbolic models. At its origin, the core of cognitive science was the relation between psychology and artificial intelligence. In the original project, this marriage was to be fruitful for both disciplines. Artificial intelligence expected from psychology the analysis of high-level mental mechanisms that, once simulated on a computer, could improve the efficiency of artificial systems. With computer simulation, psychology was to acquire a method to validate its models. However, this marriage, which for a while has been very productive and has generated many interesting ideas, ultimately failed. Artificial intelligence has evolved computing techniques that produce efficient systems without asking anymore if these techniques replicate human mental processes more or less faithfully. In psychology, the constraint to produce computational models has again restricted its scope ( Airenti and Colombetti, 1991 ).

Thus, the results of cognitive science of the twentieth century have led to a shift in cognitive science that has emerged with this century. Some researchers have proclaimed that the theoretical hypothesis that minds functionalities can be modeled disregarding the fact that they operate on the external world through the body could no longer be accepted. This new approach implies accounting for the biology of the mind/body unity and the interaction with the external world, both physical and social. One source of inspiration for this new turn came from Varela et al. (1991) , who proposed the concept of the embodied mind . Actually, the concept of embodiment includes many rather disparate inspirations, from Merleau-Ponty and phenomenology to Buddhism. I do not analyze these questions here. What interests me is the mere assumption that cognition is grounded in the world.

This new turn corresponds to the major importance assumed by robotics. It might be exaggerated to say that the role played by artificial intelligence in the past is now assumed by robotics. However, it is clear that the aim of constructing artificial actors that interact with the world and/or with humans has again established a link between the study of humans and the production of artificial systems. With respect to the past, the focus is no longer on the symbolic function of the mind, but on the mind embedded into a physical device that interacts with the external world. This evolution is linked to the enlarged scope of present robotics that goes well beyond traditional tasks such as farm automation. The ambition is to construct robots that may cooperate with humans in a multiplicity of tasks, including, for instance, assisting aged or disabled people or interacting with autistic children. Social robotics has then evolved toward biologically inspired systems, based on the notions of self-organization and embodiment ( Pfeifer et al., 2007 ). This new development has led to question once again psychologists about those characteristics that make humans what they are. If robots must be able to interact with humans, they should show those same characteristics ( Kahn et al., 2007 ). Can robots be endowed with intentionality, emotions, and possibly empathy?

Here, again a functionalist position appears. For some authors, the fact that the robot’s internal mechanisms are grounded in physical interactions with the external environment means that they truly have the potentiality of intrinsic intentionality ( Zlatev, 2001 ). This means, for them, that a mind is embodied in a robot. To the question of whether robots can have emotions, Arbib and Fellous (2004) answer that a better knowledge of biological systems will allow us in the future to single out “brain operating principles” independent of the physical medium in which they are implemented. This new form of functionalism is currently contrasted with an approach that considers that mental states and emotions are not intrinsic but can only be attributed to robots by humans ( Ziemke et al., 2015 ). Robots’ embodiment does not overcome the objection that was addressed to traditional artificial intelligence, namely that mental states and emotions can only be produced by a biological brain ( Ziemke, 2008 ). This latter position maintains that the relevant question for human-robot interaction is not that robots must be intentional beings, but that they must be perceived as such by humans ( Airenti, 2015 ; Wiese et al., 2017 ).

In conclusion, we can say that cognitive science was born as a way to renew psychology through a privileged connection with artificial intelligence. In the present state of research, it is social robotics that is attempting to establish a connection with biological sciences, psychology, and neuroscience, in order to build into robots those functionalities that should allow them to successfully interact with the external physical and social world. However, the main fundamental philosophical problems remain unchanged. One could still argue, as Searle did, that human mentality is an emergent feature of biological brains and no logical, mathematical or statistical procedure can produce it.

Present Questions for Cognitive Science

The question that we may raise today is this: what is cognitive science for? The relation that psychology has established with the sciences of the artificial has hidden the fact that a number of phenomena, which are essential for explaining the functioning of the human mind, have been largely ignored. This failure in explanation, which has concerned, for instance, the managing of mental states and emotions, and many complex communicative phenomena, is fundamentally linked to the fact that the mind is constantly in interaction with the physical and social world in a process of development. The primitive idea of cognitive science was to go beyond traditional psychology to enrich the study of mind with the contributions of other disciplines that also investigated human mind, such as linguistics, philosophy, and anthropology. This approach, which concerns the definition of the field of cognitive science, has been quite early reinterpreted as a problem of formalism. The question posed has been: how could psychology produce scientific models of human thought? Hence, the importance assumed by computer modeling as a means of replacing more traditional logical, mathematical, and statistical models. However, this theoretical choice has generated a major ambiguity, because computer models that are founded on logical, mathematical, or statistical formalisms have been seen as possibly equivalent to the mind. Once the fallacy of this equivalence appears—because no artificial model may replace the causal power of the human brain—we are left with some formal models with very limited psychological significance. What has been lost is the richness that cognitive science was supposed to acquire by connecting different disciplines. In particular, for many years, this approach has prevented general psychology from connecting with developmental psychology, a field of studies that, since Baldwin, had already posed the problem of the construction of the human mind as the result of biological development and social interaction.

The Study of Development

Biology and development in the debate between piaget and chomsky.

Studying development necessarily implies considering the fact that humans are biological systems that are certainly particularly complex but also share many characteristics with other living beings. Thus, in the field of developmental psychology, many questions have emerged concerning the link between development and evolution, the relation between genetic endowment and the influence on acquisition of environment (a concept that includes physical environment, parenting, social rules, etc.), and the nature of learning.

For Piaget, who came to developmental psychology from natural sciences, development had to be seen in the light of the theories of evolution. Intelligence, for him, is a particular case of biological adaptation, and knowledge is not a state but a process. Through action, children explore space and objects in the external world, and in this way, for instance, they learn the properties of the objects and their relations. These ideas, which sound rather contemporary to us, were considered as problematic in the past and prevented the establishment of a relationship between the study of development and the study of cognition in general. It is only in this century that development has been integrated into evolution studies via the so-called evo-devo approach and that these ideas have given rise to an interest in psychology ( Burman, 2013 ).

Actually, some aspects of Piaget’s perspective were problematic. Piaget supported his theory using what was considered a Lamarckian vision of evolution that assumed the inheritance of acquired characteristics. He had a well-known debate at the end of his life (1975) with Noam Chomsky on language acquisition, and outstanding biologists who also participated to the debate contested the validity of his use of the concept of phenocopy ( Piattelli-Palmarini, 1979/1980 ). In fact, on this point, Piaget had been influenced by Baldwin, who proposed what is known as Baldwin’s effect ( Simpson, 1953 ). This effect manifests in three stages: (1) Individual organisms interact with the environment in such a way as to produce nonhereditary adaptations; (2) genetic factors producing similar traits occur in the population; and (3) these factors increase in frequency under natural selection (taken from Waddington, 1953 ). Later, Piaget revised his own theory and updated Baldwin’s effect under the influence of Waddington ( Burman, 2013 ). Recently, epigenetic theories have emerged in biology, and the importance of development is generally accepted. On the developmental side, it has been proposed that Piaget’s theory might be replaced as a metatheory for cognitive development by evolutionary psychology ( Bjorklund, 2018 ).

The debate between Chomsky and Piaget is interesting because it is a clear example of the impossibility of dialogue between one of the fathers of cognitive science and the scholar who, at that moment, personified developmental psychology. Piaget was unable to justify his position that grammar rules could also be accounted for by sensorimotor schemata, and Chomsky appeared to have won the debate. At the same time, Chomsky presented the emergence of syntactic rules in the child’s mind, excluding in principle any possible form of learning. However, in hindsight, we know how the task of establishing abstract principles of universal grammar proved to be arduous, underwent many substantial changes and is not yet realized.

Another controversial aspect of Piaget’s position was his adherence to the recapitulation theory, i.e., the idea originally proposed by Haeckel, that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. It is this principle that motivated Piaget’s study of development as a way of contributing to the study of the evolution of human thought ( Koops, 2015 ). However, this position has as its consequence the idea that primitive populations would exist wherein we might find adult thought processes that in modern civilizations are typical of young children.

What is striking in this debate is that the specific biological model that Piaget adopted was not the only point of disagreement. What was questioned was in general the relevance of development for the study of a basic human ability such as language. Certainly, in the work of the first figures of developmental psychology, we find a baffling mix of very interesting ideas regarding the place of humans as biological entities in evolution and a difficulty in taking into account the complexities of actual biological theories and of social aspects such as cultural variation. At the same time, these scholars were confronted with objections from cognitive scientists who did not admit the relevance of investigating development for the study of the human mind.

The Interactionist Perspective

Piaget’s perspective was, in a sense, paradoxical. This perspective considered children’s development as the product of their action on the environment, but at the same time postulated a rather rigid succession of stages that led to adult thought and excluded the importance of the social aspects of this environment in the first years. In fact, infants and young children were considered closed in their egocentrism and unable to take advantage of their interactions with adults and peers.

These aspects have been criticized within developmental psychology, where a cultural turn, fathered by Vygotsky (1962/1986) and mainly interpreted in the United States by Bruner (1990) , has arisen. For both these authors, biological factors are considered an endowment of potentialities that develop in a society of co-specifics and are submitted to variability and to cultural variation.

Bruner was, at the outset, an enthusiastic supporter of cognitive science and in particular of the mentalist theory of language proposed by Chomsky ( Bruner, 1983b ). Later, however, the primacy that Chomsky assigns to syntax turned out to be unsatisfactory to Bruner, according to whom language is fundamentally a communicative device. The problem of language acquisition is thus redefined as the development of a communicative capacity that appears in the prelinguistic stage. This position was the result of Bruner’s work on preverbal communication carried out at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University starting in 1966.

For Bruner, language requires the maturation of cognitive structures, which underlie intentional action in general. His debt to Piaget with regard to the importance of action is evident. Language is “a specialized and conventionalized extension of cooperative action” ( Bruner, 1975 ). In this, he rejoins the communication theories proposed within the philosophy of language by Austin (1962) and Grice (1989) .

Bruner’s studies are part of a revolution in developmental studies in which more careful scrutiny and more sophisticated experimentation led to the discovery that children begin to engage in rather complex cognitive activity very early on. Prior to these studies, many of the aspects relating to infant cognition were not taken into consideration. The prejudice that saw human development as the slow acquisition of rationality prevented researchers from seeking elements of complexity in the cognition of a new-born.

In brief, since its origin, developmental psychology has undergone an important change. At the outset, the idea was that what characterized human cognition was adult rational thought, and studying development meant understanding the stages that led to this achievement. Later, the goal became understanding the development of the different faculties that characterize cognition starting from birth. This goal has also opened the door to comparative studies.

The Problems of Method

Developmental psychologists have always struggled with problems of method.

Piaget frequently discussed his observations of his three children. Studies on language acquisition have often benefited from researchers’ observations of their own children (see, for instance, Stern and Stern, 1928 ). These procedures, which have been considered as barely scientific by other psychologists, have provided useful inspiration for further research. Note that Darwin’s observations of his children were a fundamental source for his work on emotions ( Darwin, 1872/1965 ).

Ethical reasons forbid experiments, which may perturb children. Moreover, conceiving experiments that have ecological validity is even more difficult to do with young children than with adults. Hence, the necessity of using different methods in order to produce data that cannot be collected using classic experimental procedures. Without using observational methods, for instance, it is not possible to assess the spontaneous appearance of a given phenomenon ( Airenti, 2016 ). Furthermore, some behaviors may appear only in specific situations and would go unnoticed if they were not observed by caregivers who may see children at different moments of the day and in different situations. Thus, developmental psychologists have used different methodologies, classic experiments but also fieldwork, ethological observation, and parent reports.

A fundamental advancement was the development of techniques permitting to assess infants’ and young children’s abilities in experiments. A key element was the elaboration of the habituation paradigm ( Fantz, 1964 ; Bornstein, 1985 ). After repeated exposure to a stimulus, infants’ looking time decreases due to habituation and increases when a novel stimulus is presented. Habituation allows us to understand if infants discriminate among different stimuli.

In particular for language studies, nonnutritive sucking ( Siqueland and De Lucia, 1969 ) has been used. This is an experimental method based on operant conditioning allowing one to test infants’ discrimination of and preference for different stimuli. This technique has been used to show, for instance, that infants already acquire in the mother’s womb the ability to recognize and prefer the prosody of a language and of familiar voices ( DeCasper and Fifer, 1980 ).

Currently, the most utilized technique with infants is preferential looking or reaching. In this technique, two stimuli are presented together and what is measured is the infant’s preference. Specific types of this technique are used to claim surprise, anticipation, and preferences for novel or familiar stimuli and to evaluate preference over and above novelty or familiarity ( Hamlin, 2014 ) 5 .

Another technique presently used to investigate infant cognitive development is EEG recordings, even if creating infant-friendly laboratory environments, age-appropriate stimuli, and infant- friendly paradigms requires special care ( Hoehl and Wahl, 2012 ).

The development of these experimental techniques has vastly enlarged the scope of infant studies. In particular, a new research trend has emerged aimed at discovering what has been called the core knowledge ( Spelke, 2000 ; Spelke and Kinzler, 2007 ). The idea is that at the basis of human cognition, there is a set of competencies, such as representing objects, action, number and space, which are already present in infants and which underlie and constrain later acquisitions. Researchers have also been working on other possible basic competencies such as social cognition ( Baillargeon et al., 2016 ) and morality ( Wynn and Bloom, 2014 ).

In the literature, debate continues surrounding the replicability and robustness of findings obtained within these experimental paradigms, in particular with respect to infants’ and toddlers’ implicit false belief and morality ( Hamlin, 2014 ; Tafreshi et al., 2014 ; Baillargeon et al., 2018 ; Sabbagh and Paulus, 2018 ).

This debate also involves the relation between development and evolution. For Tafreshi and colleagues, for instance, the idea of core knowledge would involve a consideration of high-level cognitive capacities as biologically predetermined instead of constructed in interaction with the environment. This is not the perspective of those who consider that development does exist in the social environment but is constrained by a number of basic competencies ( Hamlin, 2014 ). An important element of this perspective is comparing human and animal capacities. In fact, research has shown that such basic competencies also exist in some form in animals. For instance, numerous studies have shown that adult nonhuman primates have the core systems of object, number, agent representations, etc. ( Spelke and Kinzler, 2007 ).

These preoccupations have also informed work by Tomasello and the Leipzig group. “All we can claim to have done so far–writes Tomasello–is to establish some comparative facts–organized by some theoretical speculations–that hopefully get us started in the right direction toward an evolutionary informed account of the ontogeny of uniquely human psychology” ( Tomasello, 2018 ). Comparing experimental work on great apes and young children has led him to formulate the hypothesis that the factors marking the difference between these two groups are different aspects of social cognition. Nonhuman primates have some basic capacities in these areas. In humans, the evolved capacity for shared intentionality transforms them in the species-unique human cognition and sociality ( Tomasello and Herrmann, 2010 ).

Tomasello’s work has also aroused criticism. In this case, the criticism is because his research, both with young children and primates, uses experimental methods and is carried out in a laboratory. Fieldwork primatologists have claimed that primates in captivity, tested by someone of another species, cannot display the abilities that their conspecifics display in their natural environment ( Boesch, 2007 ; De Waal et al., 2008 ). Tomasello answered this criticism by maintaining that the fact of being raised in a human environment enhances primates’ capacities ( Tomasello et al., 1993 ; Tomasello and Call, 2008 ).

In conclusion, in developmental psychology, a multiplicity of methods has been applied, and the debate over their respective validity and correct application continues. However, what is not in question is that development is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that must be analyzed as such and from different points of view.

A paradigmatic case in the present research is the study of the theory of mind. Discovering how subjects represent their own mind and other minds was proposed in 1978 by Premack and Woodruff as a problem of research on primates, and in a short time, it has become one of the main topics in developmental research ( Premack and Woodruff, 1978 ). It is currently being studied in groups of different ages, from infants to the elderly, both in typical and clinical subjects and using different methodologies, from classic experiments to clinical observation. Moreover, a number of studies investigate individual and cross-cultural variation and its role in human-robots interactions. Philosophers have contributed to the definition of this phenomenon, and neuroscientists are working to discover its neural basis.

Computational Models of Development

Some researchers have pursued the goal of constructing computational models of cognitive development using different computational approaches (for a review, see Mareschal, 2010 ). However, as the author of this review remarks, all the models have explored cognition “as an isolated phenomenon”, i.e., they did not consider the physical and social context in which development unfolds.

Karmiloff-Smith, a developmental psychologist who proposed the most interesting theory about developmental change as an alternative to Piaget’s, considered that a number of features of her RR ( representational redescription ) model happened to map onto features of connectionist models ( Karmiloff-Smith, 1992 ; for a review of these models, see Plunkett et al., 1997 ). However, she also remarks that connectionist models have modeled tasks, while development is not simply task-specific learning, as it involves deriving and using previously acquired knowledge 6 .

One result of the dissatisfaction with the results deriving from the relation between cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence and the concomitant increase in interest in embodied cognition has been the growth of developmental robotics ( Lungarella et al., 2003 ). The aim of this field is to produce baby robots endowed with sensorimotor and cognitive abilities inspired by child psychology and to model developmental changes ( Cangelosi and Schlesinger, 2018 ). This approach has led to the comparison of results in experiments with robots and children. This is a promising field, even if it does not overcome the problems described above regarding the specificity of tasks that does not allow to account for infants’ ability to utilize previously differently acquired knowledge in the performance of a given task.

In conclusion, some approaches within cognitive science have acknowledged the usefulness of studying children in order to understand the mechanisms of development. Especially in the case of developmental robotics, this has allowed for studying the interaction of different capacities such as sensorimotor abilities, perception, and language. At the same time, the computational constraints do not allow for overcoming task specificity.

Concluding Remarks

I have argued that since their beginning, general psychology and developmental psychology have followed parallel paths that have only occasionally converged. The reason is due essentially to methodological problems that have involved not only research methods but also the very object of inquiry.

Psychology was founded with the ambition of becoming a science performed in laboratories and based on experimental work. However, as early as in 1934, Vygotsky had already deplored the attempt to achieve scientific standards by limiting the importance of general issues. “As long as we lack a generally accepted system incorporating all available psychological knowledge, any important factual discovery inevitably leads to the creation of a new theory to fit the newly observed facts” ( Vygotsky, 1962/1986 , p. 13).

The birth of cognitive science has taken important steps toward constructing links with other disciplines and also other ways to study cognition. However, this opening was soon transformed in the search for a unifying methodology, namely computer modeling, as a guarantee of scientific results. Many interesting ideas have been generated. However, after four decades of work in this direction, it has become impossible to ignore that too many important aspects of the human mind and activity have been eluded.

The relative isolation of developmental psychology came from the prejudice, also shared by eminent developmental psychologists like Piaget, that what characterizes human cognition are adult cognitive abilities.

However, from the start, developmental psychology was not limited to investiganting the specificity of children’s cognition. It devoted attention to what makes development possible, including biological endowment and cultural transmission; whether an infant should be considered a blank slate or if one can define some pre-existent basic abilities; what makes humans different from animals and nonhuman primates; and how specific human abilities such as language have evolved.

At present, a rapprochement between adult and child studies is made possible by different factors. The possibility of using experimental methods to study infancy has allowed us to realize the complexity of young humans. Moreover, development is increasingly being considered as a phenomenon not only characterizing childhood but also present over the life span, including both the acquisition and the decay of mental abilities ( Bialystok and Craik, 2006 ). Studying the human mind means studying how the human mind changes in interaction with the external environment all life long. In this sense, the study of human mind is inherently connected with the study of its development.

An important question of method emerges here. We have observed that over the years, developmental psychologists have sought to construct methods that can be reliable and at the same time can adequately address the topics under discussion here. The achievement of finding ways to carry out experiments with infants and nonhuman primates has been an important advancement in this perspective. This advancement has garnered both praise and criticism. To be reliable, experiments with infants require very rigorous procedures. Frequently, a detailed analysis of procedures is necessary to explain divergent results. However, it can be noted that reproducibility is an open problem for psychological science in general ( Open Science Collaboration, 2015 ). For nonhuman primates, the ecological validity of laboratory experiments has been questioned. More generally, it has been shown that in the field of developmental psychology, experimental studies do not completely replace other methodologies, but rather should coexist with them.

The human mind is complex, and all the methods that have been proposed in different disciplines may be useful in advancing our knowledge of it. The explanation of this complexity was the main goal underlying the proposal of cognitive science and is the perspective we must pursue in the future.

On this ground, the paths of psychology and developmental psychology may reconverge.

Author Contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The reviewer MT declared a shared affiliation, with no collaboration, with the author to the handling editor at time of review.

1 The very earliest date was 1875 and that same year William James’ laboratory at Harvard in the United States was established ( Harper, 1950 ).

2 William James was influenced by Darwin and this appears in particular in his conceiving the mind as a function and not as a thing ( Bredo, 1998 ). However, his book The Principles of Psychology , first published in 1890 and later revised several times, ignored child development. In the chapter devoted to methods and snares in psychology, he adds to introspective observation and experimental method the comparative method. “So it has come to pass that instincts of animals are ransacked to throw light on our own; and that the reasoning faculties of bees and ants, the minds of savages, infants, madmen, idiots, the deaf and blind, criminals, and eccentrics, are invoked in support of this or that special theory about some part of our own mental life” ( James, 1983 , p. 193). If he admits that “information grows and results emerge”, he also cautions that “there are great sources of error in the comparative method” and that “comparative observation, to be definite, must usually be made to test some pre-existing hypothesis” ( James, 1983 ).

3 Putnam was actually the first to employ the term functionalism , and his aim in doing so was anti-reductionist. In his 1975 work he used the comparison with a computer program to show that psychological properties do not have a physical and chemical nature, even though they are realized by physical and chemical properties ( Putnam, 1975 ).

4 , Hewitt (1991) highlights the difficulties inherent in constructing artificial systems, which, like social systems, are founded on concepts such as commitment, cooperation, conflict, negotiation, and so forth.

5 Gaze and eye-tracking techniques are normally used in psychological research with adults ( Mele and Federici, 2012 ) but it is in developmental studies that they have had a dramatic impact on the possibilities of inquiry.

6 A different approach that has given origin to formal models and simulations is the paradigm that views the developmental process as a change within a complex dynamic system. Cognition in this perspective is embodied in the processes of perception and action ( Smith and Thelen, 2003 ).

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SPECIALTY GRAND CHALLENGE article

Challenges in developmental psychology, a focus on sustainable development.

• 1 Centre for Research and Development, University of Teacher Education in Special Needs, Zurich, Switzerland
• 2 Institute of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
• 3 Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany

Introduction

Developmental psychology is traditionally of interdisciplinary nature with the aims to understand mechanisms of normative and individual changes and consistencies throughout the lifespan. The applied fields of developmental psychology target into health and educational sciences. The aims of developmental psychology cannot be reached without understanding and applying the underlying biological, senso-motoric, emotional, social, and cognitive processes that are intertwined with cultural context.

The field changes in dependence on internal and external factors. First, the increase in knowledge, in each of the associated areas can change the focus of interest in subfields or the whole field of developmental psychology. Second, methodological inventions can boost the development of certain subfields or the whole field of developmental psychology. Third, sudden changes in cultural context, by global events, such as strikingly demonstrated recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, affect the focus of interest in certain periods in life, or in interventions. Fourth, there is a solid claim for a bias in research on and from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) countries ( Henrich et al., 2010 ), which affect inferences and impact from research in developmental psychology. Awareness toward the cultural context of research in developmental psychology, its limitations and generalizability, can change perspective and course of the field.

In the following Specialty Grand Challenge, we would like to sketch the most important challenges we observe within the field of developmental psychology, which are dependent on the above-mentioned areas of change: changes in knowledge and methodology, changes or bias in environment by global events and cultural context.

Aims of the Specialty Grand Challenge

One of the key challenges we observe in developmental psychology relate to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Agenda 2030 and the associated SDGs pose new challenges on science as a whole and as such on developmental psychology. The global goals to sustain the resources in the world's biosphere for future generations are balanced across the dimensions of social responsibility, ecological responsibility, and economic growth ( United Nations Sustainable Development Group, 2019 ). Local or global actions at each of these dimensions can have an impact on the individual development and potentially on the normative development of people. Thus, they may affect individuals differently in childhood, youth, and adulthood. For example, youth in several countries have shown to take responsibility regarding SDGs to engage against climate change, against poverty, diversity, human rights, and democracy ( Plan International UK, 2018 ), while Education for Sustainable Development is part of the curriculum in many countries. The development of youth may be affected alone by the responsibility they take, and the social changes they achieve may affect development of future generations. Participating more actively in a society and being encouraged by children's rights (UNICEF), children might require more support in developing skills that pertains to engagement in active citizenship from early on. The global context and youth's participation put novel requirements on youth's and children's care, caregivers as well as education.

Further, fast economic growth in urban areas as well as political conflicts can lead to migration waves toward these areas, which provides an impact on the health and education infrastructure in both rural and urban areas, which may in turn affect vulnerable populations disproportionally, and particularly children, elderly, and individuals with disabilities. Observations of the kind has been observed in several countries ( Jampaklay et al., 2016 ; Holecki et al., 2020 ; Martín-Cano et al., 2020 ).

Actions relating to SDGs

In our view, SDGs require actions in the field of developmental psychology regarding relevant methodologies and topics. We observe two windows of opportunity to take action on the impact of SDGs on developmental psychology. First, global developments in methodology of research, particularly Open Science and Open Research Data help to access, merge, and analyze data in understanding emotion, cognition, and social dynamics in development within cultural context. These approaches initiate new discoveries but require an understanding of the technological functions and their limitations. Second, digitalization has a global impact on the use of knowledge and skills in social, health, and educational systems, which induces challenges and boosts research in the field of developmental psychology.

Regarding the methodologies, we recommend for three levels of actions. First, research in developmental psychology needs to adopt to the principles of Open Science. The movement of Open Science has been seen as an important step toward managing resources at a global scale. Open Access of publications as implemented by Frontiers and other publishers, increases access to knowledge across the globe. However, sharing data by implementing FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles on Open Research Data (ORD) would allow researchers across the globe to reuse data and connect own data to a larger pool of data than ever before. This could increase validation of evidence across different cultural contexts and could diversify and generalize theories on development. Simultaneously, methods can be further developed to adjust to novel contextual circumstances. Furthermore, a reuse of material, measures, procedures, and data contributes to more transparency and works against data loss, fosters collaborations, and generates reproducible workflows ( Klein et al., 2018 ). With these methods, key issues relating to development and SDGs can be more easily studied, because contextual differences can be identified in larger datasets. Currently, Frontiers does not have a policy regarding ORD, but in our view, we could and should commit to such a policy within our research communities.

Second, research in developmental psychology should be committed to international standards regarding the adoption of research designs, conducting research, reporting and critical appraisal standards. The EQUATOR network currently provides 529 reporting guidelines for all types of research, which are relevant for social sciences and medicine, such as PRISMA ( Page et al., 2021 ). Research communities, for example in neuroscience and medicine, have increased awareness toward such standards and thereby increased the quality of research ( O'Brien et al., 2014 ; Song et al., 2017 ). It is important that research communities commit themselves toward such standards to increase reproducibility, transparency, and sustainability of research across the globe. In addition to reporting standards, the reviewing standards should be transparent and compliant with the guidelines. Several valuable critical appraisal tools have been developed, such as CASP or JBI checklists, which can support and standardize reviewing processes. By taking such standards more seriously, and with a higher commitment to them, globally, the rigor in addressing key questions relating to development can be pushed forward, and a sustainable knowledge base can be acquired.

Third, we observe strong innovations and methodological developments in areas, which now affect the field of developmental psychology. It will be important to increase awareness about applying technologies for specific solutions and specific contexts. A recent Research Topic on empirical research at a distance provides a good example of putting together novel and rapid methodical developments driven by COVID-19 pandemic but discussing their limitations thoroughly ( Tsuji et al., 2022 ). In our view, it is important for novel methods to be presented in a comprehensive manner to provide informative access not only to procedures but also to its purposes and shortcomings. For this, Frontiers offers formats that might be used more often: Data Report, Technology and Code, Study Protocol, but also Brief Research Report could be used to introduce a technologically innovative method to describe novel possibilities of analysis. It should then involve a reflection about the used technology regarding ethics and privacy, its advantages, and disadvantages by addressing tradeoffs, for example between real world behaviors and in-lab controls. Examples of such technologies, involve techniques to record high resolution spatial and temporal data in more realistic settings such as Real-Time response measurements ( Waldvogel and Metz, 2020 ), dyads in Experience Sampling Methods ( Xia et al., 2022 ), Near Field Communication ( Lorusso et al., 2018 ), Google Trends Research ( Jun et al., 2018 ; Mavragani et al., 2018 ), and hyperscanning EEG ( Kayhan et al., 2022 ). A debate on the use of these techniques may provide a window of opportunity for global research on development and SDGs.

Regarding topics, we observe a strong impact of digitalization on health and education systems. Health issues have become a global phenomenon. The way in which people at different stages during the life span have access to health care, receive information on health risks and preventions, and are at risk to health problems is not evenly distributed. Industrial pollution, access to nutrients, eating habits, digital literacy and consumption, access to information depend on societal, technological, and climate changes. These potential risk and resources can affect fetal, early development and parenting, as well as later periods in life. The increasing knowledge about the mechanisms and the more widespread possibilities to observe changes longitudinally in several areas around the world lead to a more detailed understanding of the development of health risks and the effect of interventions during life span. In our view, it is important that the knowledge about health risks at all ages and heterogeneous populations is well-documented and (digitally) accessible for use by professional health practitioners.

Along similar lines, we observe that education undergoes changes depending on technological development, particularly digital information technology. Access to information and knowledge about education governance, access to education during political, societal and climate change can all affect the way in which children develop and the way in which communities and families are able to support the development of children. The current access to larger datasets has the potential to facilitate research about the psychological development on these topics. We therefore encourage the research on human development, health, and education specifically concerned with the influence of social and technological change in dynamic cultural contexts.

The main challenges that we observe are related to the global movements in science and society, which affect the course that developmental psychology takes. In the past, developmental psychology has been dominated by European and North American scientists, followed by important research from Japan ( Norimatsu, 2018 ). Now, researchers from an increasing number of countries across the world, but particularly China deliver important insights into the field of developmental psychology. Further, the Agenda 2030, the global issues relating to health and education, the Open Science movement, the increasing knowledge about developmental psychology from other counties, the ability to merge greater datasets provide the possibility to understand development at a different level. Our view is indeed in line with these developments, first because we see a chance that normative and individual changes in development can be better understood at both a global and local level. Second, because we trust that applied scientists can address that knowledge. Their task is to improve, for example, health care, health risk prevention and education in cooperation with professionals and providers of social support.

Nevertheless, we are aware of the subjective nature of our view. The foundation of it was mainly based on the set of Research Topics that we evaluate at the Frontiers in Psychology Specialty Section Developmental Psychology, the manuscript we receive in our role as Section Chief Editors, as well as our role we have as professionals at our universities and the research communities we work in. We are also aware of the diversity of ethical and cultural values, which drives our vision of research on developmental psychology and the visions of all researchers in the field. The hope that shared values on the necessity to continue research on developmental psychology in the light of Sustainable Development remains.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: Open Science, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Open Research Data, cultural context, developmental difference, methodological standards

Citation: Klaver P and Rohlfing KJ (2022) Challenges in developmental psychology, a focus on Sustainable Development. Front. Psychol. 13:1086458. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1086458

Received: 01 November 2022; Accepted: 03 November 2022; Published: 18 November 2022.

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Copyright © 2022 Klaver and Rohlfing. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Peter Klaver, peter.klaver@hfh.ch

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Exploring Educational Adjustment and Life Skills Development in Senior Secondary School Students: A Comparison Study

| Published: August 23, 2024

Your research explores the correlation between educational adjustment and life skills development among senior secondary school students. By examining this relationship, you aim to understand how students adapt to academic challenges and develop essential life skills during their secondary education. The study compares these aspects between boys and girls students in Sonipat, with a sample size of 100. Through descriptive statistics analysis, including mean, standard deviation, and t-tests, you investigated the differences between boys and girls in both educational adjustment and life skills. Interestingly, your findings suggest that there is no significant difference between boys and girls regarding educational adjustment or life skills. However, the mean scores for educational adjustment and life skills differed, with boys scoring 57.2 and girls scoring 190.40, respectively. Furthermore, the t-value of 7.09, significant at the 0.01 level, indicates that there is indeed a significant difference between boys and girls in terms of overall educational adjustment and life skills. As a result, you rejected the null hypothesis, suggesting that there is a difference between boys and girls in senior secondary school students’ educational adjustment and life skills. Your research also concludes that life skills have a notable influence on the educational adjustment of senior secondary school students. This suggests that developing life skills can positively impact students’ ability to adapt to academic challenges. Overall, your study contributes valuable insights into the complex dynamics of educational adjustment and life skills development among senior secondary school students.

Educational Adjustment , Life Skill , Senior Secondary

This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2024, Rajkumari, & Malik, J.

Received: April 25, 2024; Revision Received: August 19, 2024; Accepted: August 23, 2024

Dr. Rajkumari @ [email protected]

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Published in   Volume 12, Issue 3, July-September, 2024

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