As a social psychologist I've never encountered this phenomenon, but maybe because I only listen to devo psych talks when I find them interesting. Talks in conferences are self selected in that sense I guess.
I do wonder if what you describe makes the science not worth doing. It seems we would still get a lot of data on "at which age children can do what", and it strikes me as a very "basic science" way of doing things. Kind of like people measuring orbits of the planets, long before Kepler. But this information is what allowed Kepler to do his work. Perhaps future devo theorists can do some useful dot-connecting using the data provided with this research.
This is why I moved toward evolutionary biology versus psychology as an explanatory framework for behavior in my undergraduate. I'm very glad I never looked back. Psychology is one of the most undercooked disciplines in the academy, at least among those claiming to belong under the scientific umbrella. Part language game, part ethnocentrism, part pseudo-quantification, part atheoretical fumbling in the dark. Mostly junk. Deep respect for people such as yourself that stay committed to improving the cause versus abandoning it. Maybe a century on, psychology will finally be a serious science.
I've only studied a narrow band of developmental psychology because it's not my primary interest. I would just defend people who make these 'cognitive timelines' in at least one respect.
One way to answer questions about localization and the origin of cognitive function is to first obtain the timeline of cognitive development, and then compare it to the timeline of physical development. Another is to compare timelines of cognitive development across multiple concepts/capacities and argue that one capacity grows out of an earlier capacity - which is useful for sketching the structure of cognition. You can also combine these two approaches.
Now maybe no one has done this is a convincing way, but accumulating more cognitive development timelines should be helpful for this approach.
In my world is a non-psychologist developmental psychology means learning more by developing the mind in a particular subject matter or discipline to actually be able to achieve something tangible. Having said that, it's how our minds integrate this new development into processes and systems and integrated into the big picture of how we fit into the world and with the big picture of the world is. To me, this represents developmental psychology. As I said, I am a non-psychologist who works in adult education. To me, psychology means education a form of education, and it's a little more complicated because it could include how the subconscious mind is integrated with the conscious mind around these developments and nuances of new learning. Basically to me developmental psychology means exploring self-direction and moving forward towards some kind of transformative thinking, but most of all, how it's used is what's important and how it's integrated into processes, systems in the mind and integration in The vape picture of how we think and process our place in the world. To me if you ask me what developmental psychology was and I would answer something like the above to me. That's development. It also involves intention to move forward with learning. I always have to ask to a question like so what well, the big picture is that this is how it fits into these systems in my thinking and how I make sense of it and this is how I make sense of it by explaining it this way. It's all in the application. How do we apply the nuances of what we know someone and I'll leave it at this. In an adult education class wrote a paper on a woman's way of knowing somebody could write a paper on a man's way of knowing or a psychologist way of knowing. What is knowing? Well it's how we think about subject matter and how we make sense of it internal like and how we fit into the world. Big picture. My thoughts are quite different from the contents of the article or the comments. What do people think of a non-psychologist few of developmental psychology? Malcolm MacPherson, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
It's rare to see someone inside a discipline point a mirror at the carnival. Most people inside developmental psychology work the script. They start with an adult intuition, dress it up as some “gap”, and then generate age groups like they're playing some academic bingo card. And everyone politely smiles because that's how the production line hums.
But what you did in this article was refuse the dance. You acknowledged the routine and then asked the one question everyone is dying to ask but knows will get you a slap: what's the actual point of this? When you can't answer that question more deeply than "nobody's done it before," you're just adding noise, not knowledge.
That honesty matters. Not because it tears down an entire field but because it creates space for something better. Not everything needs to be dismantled to be improved. Sometimes you just need someone who's been through the labyrinth to tell you where the dead ends are.
Keep going. Keep questioning. That's how any field moves from posturing to meaning.
My Engineering Grad School Advisor (McMaster) was a crusty fellow. In every undergraduate, Master's or PhD defence he always asked this question. So what ?
I'm not a scientist or even an academic, so this insider sociological critique is really interesting to me. It's funny how even the intellectual elite fall into the traps of perverse incentives. Definitely looking forward to the "what should be done instead" follow-up!
I loved this piece but I would only argue that there is a need to know where a process occurs in a certain area of the brain because it can help explain a given behaviour? For instance, an injury in that area would explain a change of behaviour or an abnormally large/different configuration part due to trauma? I read somewhere that children that endured abuse have literally a different brain because certain areas were under or over stimulated. Therefore, I think that there ks value in knowing about which part of the brain the behaviour is processed. Thanks for reading, I am a non academic so please be kind :))
As a developmental-adjacent social psychologist, I was a bit offended by your dismissal of online survey-based research. I have done work involving experiments with toddlers, and I have used online questionnaires and scales. I won't argue that they are equally arduous, but rather that the efforts involved are not commensurate. Research with young children requires a great deal of logistics, not to speak of unfailing patience and good cheer on the part of testers. But construction of a valid and reliable instrument that can actually produce evidence relevant to one's theoretical questions, whether developmental or social, can take enormous amounts of time spent reading, thinking, discussing, and fiddling with the items.
Also on developmental psychology if one is cutely mentally ill and they stabilize and explore how to rebuild their mental house life in recovery and then moving to to flourishing and thriving. And this certainly must be called development or developmental psychology because it's how the person integrates recovery into their mind and how they grow and articulate to grow into functioning normal adults with a mindset of of building meaning agency a life of gratitude to have achievements and building relationships across many different parts of society. This is development to me. Word developmental psychology processes of the mind. Also, this critical path planning and planning models which contribute in various forms of complexity and new ones to how one develops psychologically without critical path planning in the 1950s we would be nowhere really in terms of Major achievements like scientific achievements....
I'm glad to see that you understand the difference between a good paper and a publishable one.
As a social psychologist I've never encountered this phenomenon, but maybe because I only listen to devo psych talks when I find them interesting. Talks in conferences are self selected in that sense I guess.
I do wonder if what you describe makes the science not worth doing. It seems we would still get a lot of data on "at which age children can do what", and it strikes me as a very "basic science" way of doing things. Kind of like people measuring orbits of the planets, long before Kepler. But this information is what allowed Kepler to do his work. Perhaps future devo theorists can do some useful dot-connecting using the data provided with this research.
This is why I moved toward evolutionary biology versus psychology as an explanatory framework for behavior in my undergraduate. I'm very glad I never looked back. Psychology is one of the most undercooked disciplines in the academy, at least among those claiming to belong under the scientific umbrella. Part language game, part ethnocentrism, part pseudo-quantification, part atheoretical fumbling in the dark. Mostly junk. Deep respect for people such as yourself that stay committed to improving the cause versus abandoning it. Maybe a century on, psychology will finally be a serious science.
I've only studied a narrow band of developmental psychology because it's not my primary interest. I would just defend people who make these 'cognitive timelines' in at least one respect.
One way to answer questions about localization and the origin of cognitive function is to first obtain the timeline of cognitive development, and then compare it to the timeline of physical development. Another is to compare timelines of cognitive development across multiple concepts/capacities and argue that one capacity grows out of an earlier capacity - which is useful for sketching the structure of cognition. You can also combine these two approaches.
Now maybe no one has done this is a convincing way, but accumulating more cognitive development timelines should be helpful for this approach.
In my world is a non-psychologist developmental psychology means learning more by developing the mind in a particular subject matter or discipline to actually be able to achieve something tangible. Having said that, it's how our minds integrate this new development into processes and systems and integrated into the big picture of how we fit into the world and with the big picture of the world is. To me, this represents developmental psychology. As I said, I am a non-psychologist who works in adult education. To me, psychology means education a form of education, and it's a little more complicated because it could include how the subconscious mind is integrated with the conscious mind around these developments and nuances of new learning. Basically to me developmental psychology means exploring self-direction and moving forward towards some kind of transformative thinking, but most of all, how it's used is what's important and how it's integrated into processes, systems in the mind and integration in The vape picture of how we think and process our place in the world. To me if you ask me what developmental psychology was and I would answer something like the above to me. That's development. It also involves intention to move forward with learning. I always have to ask to a question like so what well, the big picture is that this is how it fits into these systems in my thinking and how I make sense of it and this is how I make sense of it by explaining it this way. It's all in the application. How do we apply the nuances of what we know someone and I'll leave it at this. In an adult education class wrote a paper on a woman's way of knowing somebody could write a paper on a man's way of knowing or a psychologist way of knowing. What is knowing? Well it's how we think about subject matter and how we make sense of it internal like and how we fit into the world. Big picture. My thoughts are quite different from the contents of the article or the comments. What do people think of a non-psychologist few of developmental psychology? Malcolm MacPherson, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
It's rare to see someone inside a discipline point a mirror at the carnival. Most people inside developmental psychology work the script. They start with an adult intuition, dress it up as some “gap”, and then generate age groups like they're playing some academic bingo card. And everyone politely smiles because that's how the production line hums.
But what you did in this article was refuse the dance. You acknowledged the routine and then asked the one question everyone is dying to ask but knows will get you a slap: what's the actual point of this? When you can't answer that question more deeply than "nobody's done it before," you're just adding noise, not knowledge.
That honesty matters. Not because it tears down an entire field but because it creates space for something better. Not everything needs to be dismantled to be improved. Sometimes you just need someone who's been through the labyrinth to tell you where the dead ends are.
Keep going. Keep questioning. That's how any field moves from posturing to meaning.
uhh, did an LLM write this? It's filled with claude tics
I forgot to “like” your comment.
I’ll take that as a compliment. Just a mirror here, reflecting what I see.
My Engineering Grad School Advisor (McMaster) was a crusty fellow. In every undergraduate, Master's or PhD defence he always asked this question. So what ?
I'm not a scientist or even an academic, so this insider sociological critique is really interesting to me. It's funny how even the intellectual elite fall into the traps of perverse incentives. Definitely looking forward to the "what should be done instead" follow-up!
I loved this piece but I would only argue that there is a need to know where a process occurs in a certain area of the brain because it can help explain a given behaviour? For instance, an injury in that area would explain a change of behaviour or an abnormally large/different configuration part due to trauma? I read somewhere that children that endured abuse have literally a different brain because certain areas were under or over stimulated. Therefore, I think that there ks value in knowing about which part of the brain the behaviour is processed. Thanks for reading, I am a non academic so please be kind :))
As a developmental-adjacent social psychologist, I was a bit offended by your dismissal of online survey-based research. I have done work involving experiments with toddlers, and I have used online questionnaires and scales. I won't argue that they are equally arduous, but rather that the efforts involved are not commensurate. Research with young children requires a great deal of logistics, not to speak of unfailing patience and good cheer on the part of testers. But construction of a valid and reliable instrument that can actually produce evidence relevant to one's theoretical questions, whether developmental or social, can take enormous amounts of time spent reading, thinking, discussing, and fiddling with the items.
It's not just in psychology. So much (*so much*) philosophy takes this form now.
But you have just given the evil R2 in me some delightful ammunition. Much-needed gaps, indeed!
Because we have to feed Artificial Intelligence (the new knowledge diffusers) with new information to play with
Also on developmental psychology if one is cutely mentally ill and they stabilize and explore how to rebuild their mental house life in recovery and then moving to to flourishing and thriving. And this certainly must be called development or developmental psychology because it's how the person integrates recovery into their mind and how they grow and articulate to grow into functioning normal adults with a mindset of of building meaning agency a life of gratitude to have achievements and building relationships across many different parts of society. This is development to me. Word developmental psychology processes of the mind. Also, this critical path planning and planning models which contribute in various forms of complexity and new ones to how one develops psychologically without critical path planning in the 1950s we would be nowhere really in terms of Major achievements like scientific achievements....