ABSTRACT
The current state of developmental psychology is such as surely to confuse a Kuhnian philosopher of psychology. Instead of a well-defined paradigm dominating the field since the ostensive displacement of influential structuralist theories like Piaget’s and Chomsky’s, 1 one sees a bewildering variety of development theories. There is social learning theory, schema theory, rule learning theory, skill theory, information processing theory, componential theory, activity theory, dialectical theory, neo-Piagetian theory, ecological theory, modularity views and much more. Gone are the days when the theoretical landscape was divisible into large areas defined simply by behaviourism, psychoanalytic theory, Gestalt theory and Piagetian theory. To some observers, theoretical discourse in developmental psychology has the sound of the Tower of Babel: many tongues and little communication among the speakers.
