Theories of Developmental Psychology

Citation

Miller, P. H. (2016). Theories of Developmental Psychology (6th ed.). Worth Publishers.

Chapter Summary

The sixth edition runs to about 512 pages in nine chapters. After a general introduction, seven chapters are each given to one family of theory, and a final chapter draws the theories together. The publisher's notes on the edition mention a contemporary research section in most of the theory chapters and an applications section in the chapter on Vygotsky.

Chapter 1: Introduction

The opening chapter introduces the book and its subject. The new-edition notes add coverage of developmental cascade, the effect of a child's relationship with a parent on later teenage and adult relationships, and of the effect of experience on the brain in language development.

Chapter 2: Piaget's Cognitive-Stage Theory and the Neo-Piagetians

The chapter presents Piaget's stage theory and the neo-Piagetian approaches that followed it. For the sixth edition it adds discussion of Piaget's views on memory, infant cognitive abilities and social and emotional development in light of current research, of Kurt Fischer's dynamic structuralism, and of developmental cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging.

Chapter 3: Freud's and Erikson's Psychoanalytic Theories

Freud's and Erikson's theories share a chapter. New material includes recent work bringing attachment theory and psychoanalytic approaches together, predictive models of the effects of early social and emotional experience on later development, and research on identity development and the influence of racial and economic stratification.

Chapter 4: Vygotsky and the Sociocultural Approach

The chapter covers Vygotsky's theory and sociocultural work that followed it. The edition adds material on how culture affects intellectual functioning, including the effect of communication technologies, research on private speech, cultural variation in views of intelligence, and problem-based learning in the applications section. Three new subsections on social change, immigrant families and current cultural psychology are listed.

Chapter 5: Biological Approaches: Ethology, Evolution, Neuroscience, Genetics

This chapter was fully revised for the sixth edition to focus on biological approaches. It adds sections on developmental neuroscience, genetics and integrated multilevel biological perspectives, with discussion of epigenetic models, neuroimaging and neurogenetics.

Chapter 6: Social Learning Theory

The chapter presents social learning theory with updated discussion of collective efficacy, moral disengagement in cyberbullying, and coercive caretaker-child interactions and later behaviour problems at school. The contemporary research section covers imitation, action mirroring and the mirror neuron system, and preschoolers' selective learning based on trust in the model.

Chapter 7: Information-Processing Theory

The chapter presents the information-processing approach. New material includes memory for negative events such as abuse and the effects of multitasking on memory; the contemporary research section covers executive function, cognitive neuroscience, embodied cognition, Bayesian models, statistical learning and developmental robotics.

Chapter 8: Gibson's Ecological Theory of Perceptual Development

The chapter presents Gibson's ecological theory of perceptual development. Its contemporary research section was revised to include infant motor development and advances made possible by neuroimaging.

Chapter 9: Theories Today: Themes and Reflections

The final chapter looks across the theories. It adds coverage of theory of mind research, dynamic systems theory and core knowledge theories, and gives more attention to biological theories and recent research.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4

• Developmental cascade: the effect of a child's relationship with a parent on later relationships, introduced in the opening chapter.
• Stage theory and neo-Piagetian approaches: Piaget's account of cognitive stages and the work that revised it, including Fischer's dynamic structuralism.
• Psychoanalytic theory and attachment: Freud's and Erikson's accounts, and recent efforts to join them to attachment theory.
• Sociocultural approach: Vygotsky's emphasis on culture and the social context of intellectual functioning, including private speech.

Chapters 5–9

• Biological approaches: ethology, evolution, neuroscience and genetics, including epigenetic models.
• Social learning: development through observation and imitation, with collective efficacy and moral disengagement as topics.
• Information processing: executive function, memory and statistical learning as the units of analysis.
• Perceptual development: Gibson's ecological account of how perception changes.
• Dynamic systems and core knowledge: two perspectives that the final chapter adds to the current picture, alongside theory of mind.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• One theory, one chapter. The contents give each major framework its own chapter, so a reader can compare Piaget, psychoanalytic, sociocultural, biological, social learning, information-processing and perceptual theories on the same footing, and the final chapter is devoted to themes across them.
• Each theory is followed into current research. The edition notes list a contemporary research section in most theory chapters, covering topics such as neuroimaging, executive function and cyberbullying, so the chapters connect classic theory with recent work.
• A strengthened biological emphasis. The fifth chapter was rewritten for this edition to include neuroscience and genetics, and the final chapter gives more attention to biological theories, which makes the book less dependent on cognitive and sociocultural accounts alone.

Limitations

• Dated for recent work. The edition is from 2016, so research from the following years is not represented.
• Selective coverage. The nine chapters do not include a separate chapter on attachment theory, which appears inside the psychoanalytic chapter, or on ecological-systems theories of context, which are not listed as chapters.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the developmental psychology course, this is the book for readers who already know the main findings and now need to compare the frameworks that explain them. Usha Goswami's Child Psychology: A Very Short Introduction and the OpenStax Lifespan Development text are gentle first overviews; Shaffer and Kipp's Developmental Psychology: Childhood and Adolescence and Siegler, Saffran and Gershoff's How Children Develop are full textbooks organised around topics and themes. Miller works best after one of these, because theory is easier to evaluate once the empirical material is familiar.

The book also works as a guide to the primary sources in the course. Piaget's The Origin of Intelligence in the Child is the original text behind the second chapter, and Erikson's Childhood and Society is the original text behind the psychoanalytic chapter. Reading Miller's chapter first and the primary work second helps a reader see what is distinctive in each author's own voice.

How to Use This Book

The book is for students who have taken an introductory developmental psychology course and want a framework for comparing theories, for example in an upper-level undergraduate or graduate seminar on developmental theory.

A practical reading plan:

• Read Chapter 1 and Chapter 9 together. The introduction poses the questions and the final chapter returns to them, so the two frame the theory chapters in between.
• Take Chapters 2 to 8 in the order the course needs. Each chapter is devoted to one framework, so they can be read independently; Chapter 2 on Piaget comes first and is a reference point for the others.
• Compare as you go. Keep a short table of what each theory takes development to be, what it treats as the main cause of change and what research it inspired, and fill it in chapter by chapter.
• Use the contemporary research sections to see how each theory is being applied now, and pair a chapter with the primary source where one is available in this course.