Development and learning

As with most scientic concepts, the history of the concepts of development and learning is one of increasing differentiation and sophistication, driven by the goals of simultaneously encompassing all of the phenomena of interest while explaining each quantitatively and mechanistically. Developmental science, like all of the sciences, has its roots in philosophy (see the entries on the “Rationalist Roots of Modern Psychology” (Chapter 1), the “Empiricist Roots of Modern Psychology” (Chapter 2), and the “Early Experimental Psychology” (Chapter 3)). However, it also has a unique history that includes emphasis on certain works in the early canon over others as well as recent gures with distinct philosophical pedigrees. Philosophers, starting with Plato, have traditionally distinguished just two modes of learning – “learning that” (explicit learning of propositional or declarative facts) and “learning how” (skill-based or implicit learning). Although Ryle (1949) coined the terms, the distinction is already captured in Meno’s question to Socrates (“whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice”). In general, philosophers have tended to privilege propositional learning. Aristotle, for example, argued that “theoretical knowledge” was superior to “practical” or “productive” knowledge. However, a minority, notably Hubert Dreyfus (e.g., Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986), have emphasized the priority of skill learning over propositional learning. (See also the entry on “Action and Mind” [Chapter 38].) The rst evidence collected about development and learning was primarily based on introspection. Augustine (1955 [397]), for example, claimed to remember in some detail his own acquisition of language. Systematic observation did not develop until the nineteenth century. Charles Darwin (1877) was an early practitioner of the “diary method” of developmental studies, whereby a caretaker keeps a careful record of the behaviors of his or her own child over time for use as scientic evidence. J. M. Baldwin (1906 [1895]) was the rst to publish a report on a scientic experiment with a child (not coincidentally, his own daughter). He gave the account of child development in which mature cognitive capacities were hypothesized to develop out of simple infant behaviors in a series of qualitatively distinct stages. Although largely ignored in North America for most of the twentieth century, Baldwin’s works had tremendous inuence on developmental theory through Vygotsky and Piaget. G. Stanley Hall (1904) and his student Arnold Gesell (1925) compiled detailed normative information about everything from infants’ motor achievements to adolescents’ dreams. Freud’s (1949 [1905]) psychosexual theory emphasized changes in the locus of sexual impulses during child development. Although it drew on his clinical experience with adults, Freud’s theory was not based on direct studies of children and has largely fallen out of favor in studies of development. Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1986 [1934]) emphasized the role of sociocultural inuences in cognitive development, viewing learning as a process of interaction in social contexts that affects the relationship between people and their environment. Piaget developed his classic cognitive-developmental theory of child development in Switzerland starting in the 1930s. Baldwin’s theory was a major inuence on Piaget (1999 [1954]), and Piaget’s is still the best-known stage

theory. Piaget was not well known in North America until the 1960s, however, due to the dominance of behaviorism. Inspired by Pavlov’s (1927) discovery of classical conditioning through studies of animal learning, as well as by an urge to rid psychology of the inuence of psychoanalytic and metaphysical theorizing, Watson and Skinner emphasized the role of the environment in development and learning. Based primarily on animal studies, Skinner’s (1935) theory of operant conditioning suggested that the frequency of a child’s behavior could be increased by reinforcing it and decreased by punishing it through the application of external stimuli. Piaget’s work came to be recognized in North America as part of the cognitive turn in psychology that started in the 1950s, and it still pervades much theorizing in developmental science. Leading contemporary theories of learning and development are diverse; they include neo-behaviorist theories, such as Albert Bandura’s (1986) “social cognitive theory”; neo-Piagetian or “constructivist” theories (e.g., Case 1992); informationprocessing and connectionist theories (e.g., MacWhinney et al. 1989); ethological and evolutionary theories, such as John Bowlby’s (1982 [1969]) “attachment theory”; neo-Vygotskian theories, such as Barbara Rogoff’s (2003) “sociocultural” theory; ecological systems theories, such as Urie Bronfenbrenner’s “bioecological view” (Bronfenbrenner and Morris 2006); behavioral genetics theories (e.g., Plomin 1986); developmental systems theories (e.g., Gottlieb 2007); dynamic systems theories (Thelen and Smith 1994); and many others.