Commentary by Dr. Robert B. Ricco. Studies of young children’s causal learning in museums and other informal settings provide an important counterpoint to more laboratory-based, rational constructivist inquiries. In their monograph…
Challenges of Modeling Continuity and Change in Children’s Seriation and Ordinal Understanding | Commentary 84.4
Commentary by Dr. David W. Braithwaite. The monograph by McGonigle-Chalmers and Kusel (2019) describes a series of experiments providing evidence for discontinuity between ages 5 and 7 in children’s performance on seriation and ordinal understanding…
Structuralism, Constructivism, and Information Processing: Ontological Compatibilities and Incompatibilities | Commentary 84.4
Commentary by Dr. David C. Witherington. At the conceptual heart of their monograph, McGonigle-Chalmers and Kusel (2019) confront the question of compatibility between Piagetian structuralism and constructivism. On the one hand…
Size Sequencing: Increasingly Important for Theory, Research, and Practice | Commentary 84.4
Commentary by Dr. Douglas H. Clements. Despite a long-standing interest in young children’s development of basic cognitive competencies and their learning of mathematics, my initial reactions to the title of The Development of Size Sequencing…
A Developmental Science of Politics: How Research with Adolescents has Expanded the Meaning of Politics | Commentary 84.3
Commentary by Dr. Constance Flanagan. Scholarship on civic/political engagement as a domain of adolescent development has surged over the past few decades. However, as Patterson et al. (2019) point…
Making Children’s Rights and Participation Central in Children’s Political Development | Commentary 84.3
Commentary by Drs. Martin D. Ruck and Jennifer Tang. In the Patterson et al. (2019) monograph, Toward a Developmental Science of Politics, the authors make a strong case for establishing…
Pitfalls along the Path toward a Developmental Science of Politics | Commentary 84.3
Commentary by Dr. Susan Welch. As a political scientist, I find the Patterson et al. (2019) monograph, Toward a Developmental Science of Politics, of considerable interest. Their review of earlier…
Embracing Process: Developmental Change in Action | Commentary 84.2
Commentary by Dr. Jeffrey J. Lockman. How do earlier forms of abilities give rise to new ones? This is a central question of developmental science, and one that underlies much of the work that is reported…
They get rhythm—Who could ask for anything more? | Commentary 84.2
Commentary by Dr. Rick O. Gilmore. Psychology is harder than physics, and developmental psychology is harder still. The monograph by Karen Brakke and Matheus Pacheco (2019) reveals some of the reasons why, and its many positive…
Beyond Motor Development: Methodological Implications of Dynamic Systems and Applications to Social Domains | Commentary 84.2
Commentary by Dr. Paula Fitzpatrick. Developmental scientists have increasingly used systems approaches to understand complex, multi-dimensional changes that occur over the life span. Dynamics system theory has been especially popular for studying motor development, and…