ABSTRACT
In considering human growth a distinction can usefully be drawn between the word growth and the word development. This distinction between growth and development is in some respects similar to that between the changes attributed to maturation and those associated with educative influence; and like that distinction it is difficult to maintain in the description of actual human beings. Early views as to human development are implicit in the Socratic dialogues and in the writings of the Sophists. Recognition of individual differences was not a new concept. Discussion of constancy of relative status came first. This is not so often expected in relation to physical development as it has tended to be in the fields of general intelligence, of scholastic attainment or of moral character. Meanwhile by the late 1930s there was coming to fruition a series of long-term studies initiated in the 1920s by the annual testing of groups of children in various places in the United States.
