ABSTRACT
The experimental approach has been quite severely criticized for a number of reasons. One can take, for example, N. Tinbergen's criticisms about the use of experimental methods to study children's behaviour. The criticisms which are levelled against the experimental approach tend to take two forms. One form, often made by people who advocate the use of observation, is that experiments are artificial and have very little to do with real life. The other is that although experiments might tell us something about the child's immediate behaviour they explain very little about the causes of developmental change. Developmental psychologists are concerned with two main questions. One is about what changes take place in children's behaviour as they grow older, the other about the causes of these developmental changes. Psychologists have preferred the other approach which involves an inference from the nature of the development about its causes.
