STUDY OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT
A main issue in the psychological study of child development
is the scarcity of a contextual approach. The
prominence of the mechanistic and organismic models
in developmental psychology and the stress on the
individual as the unit of analysis have worked as
deterrents to contextual conceptualizations of child
development. The mechanistic model, used by behaviorism,
has construed ‘‘environment’’ in a very limited
sense as proximal stimuli. The organismic model has
stressed biologically based maturation, ignoring the
context of development. These perspectives are of
both historical and contemporary influence. Recent
advances in cognitive neuroscience, genetic research,
and the like have further strengthened the ‘‘biological
shift.’’ The focus has been on the individual organism
as a product of these two major influences—more
recently, as a combination of the two.