ABSTRACT
Charles C. Spiker played a major role in the birth and development of the field of experimental child psychology as we know it today. When he completed his graduate training and assumed his professorial duties at the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station (ICWRS) in 1951, one of his first priorities was the establishment of a doctoral training program in Experimental Child Psychology. In establishing the program, Spiker worked closely with Boyd R. McCandless, who was then director of the ICWRS. The program began in 1952 and was officially announced by the ICWRS in 1954. Although there are many examples of experimental studies done with children prior to that time, they represented a relatively small portion of the total field known as child development. Similarly, little work was being done with children in the mainstream of general experimental psychology. Most of the earlier researchers in the field of child development had concentrated on asking questions about how behavior in children changes with age, and they had amassed a considerable body of knowledge about such developmental milestones. Spiker saw a need to go beyond these developmental laws and seek out explanations for the observed changes with age. Spiker and McCandless emphasized the importance of prediction and explanation in science, and they argued forcefully that the key to understanding children's behavior lies in the experimental manipulation of variables that may be important determinants of the behavior of interest (McCandless & Spiker, 1955; Spiker & McCandless, 1954).
