Reflects on four aspects of the history of developmental psychology. Notes that the discipline has followed a path from fact collection without theory, to grand theories, to a profusion of minitheories; expanded focus from child to lifespan development; exhibited increased cross-disciplinary interests; and become more sensitive to addressing…

Earlier generations of developmental psychologists, seeking to make their discipline a normative science, stressed experimental study of children, method over subject matter, and fundamental laws underlying behavior. By contrast, the generation of psychologists after 1970 is inclusive in its research methodology, concerned with the connection…