Historical Antecedents
John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are typically cited as providing the foundations of modern form of developmental psychology.. William Shakespeare had his melancholy character Jacques (in As You Like It) articulate the seven ages of man: these included three stages of childhood and four of adulthood. In the mid-18th century Jean Jacques Rousseau described three stages of childhood: infans (infancy), puer (childhood) and adolescence in Emile: Or, On Education. Rousseau's ideas were taken up strongly by educators at the time.
In the late 19th century, psychologists familiar with the evolutionary theory of Darwin began seeking an evolutionary description of psychological development; prominent here was the pioneering psychologist G. Stanley Hall, who attempted to correlate ages of childhood with previous ages of mankind. James Mark Baldwin who wrote essays on topics that included Imitation: A Chapter in the Natural History of Consciousness and Mental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes. Baldwin was heavily involved in the theory of developmental psychology. Sigmund Freud, whose concepts were developmental, had a significant impact on public perceptions.
Read more about this topic: Developmental Psychology
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