ABSTRACT
More than a decade ago, Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979) referred to developmental psychology as “the science of the strange behavior of children, in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time” (p. 19). In the intervening years, much has changed. In general, behavioral and developmental scholars have moved toward approaches that emphasize the particularities of persons in context. Instead of expecting explanations of behavior to take the form of a few simple universal principles similar to those in Newtonian physics, researchers and theorists have moved toward approaches that are rich in description. Analyses of the ecology and the dynamics of behavior have become popular, emphasizing the particulars of people acting in specific environments and the many complex factors of human body and mind that contribute to action and thought.
