Historical perspective of Developmental Psychology: birth and establishment of the discipline.

Abstract

Developmental psychology is the scientific discipline which aims to describe, explain and optimize psychological developmental changes that occur in human’s life cycle. The aim of this paper is to show developmental psychology’s history and it has been divided in three parts. In the first one, the most important events that gave rise to the discipline are analyzed. In the second part, the emergence of developmental psychology as scientific discipline is described. Finally, in the third part, theoretical approaches that contribute to the consolidation of the discipline are explained.