Study of early childhood development has its origins in a form of psychology: behaviorism. Psychologists that accept the theories of behaviorism, known as behaviorists, believe that human behavior follows certain rules, known as association and reinforcement. This means that humans learn through experience. If a child is burnt by a candle, the child will associate the flame with pain. If the child touches the flame again, it will hurt again, reinforcing the lesson. The child then learns not to touch the flame. Behaviorists believe that this is how learning takes place.
In the 1930s and 1940s, a few key behaviorists began to focus on the behavior of children and particularly on learning styles. This focus produced theories about the stages of early childhood development that still influence thinking and educational theories today. In the 1940s and 1950s, the work of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget challenged some of the central assumptions of behaviorism. Piaget's work gradually gained a following in the United States, and was to become the basis of what is now known as developmental psychology.
One of the key behavioral theorists of the 1940s was B. F. Skinner, born in Pennsylvania in 1904. Skinner's theories about how children learn through experience are still held in high esteem today. Piaget, the Swiss psychologist who essentially founded developmental psychology and cognitive theory, agreed with some of Skinner's thinking, but found it too narrow. He believed that children also learn through observation. He described children not as passive learners but as "little scientists," who construct their own world views through observation, experience and their own logic.
Without the work of Piaget, Skinner, and other early behaviorists and developmental psychologists, developmental psychology and cognitive theory would not exist, and education would be very different. While thinkers like Piaget were not themselves educators, their thinking affects the decisions of educators and policy makers . It is now widely understood that educating children does not simply involve filling their minds with facts; instead, it is essential to interact with children, who are themselves working to understand the world.
Studies of early childhood development did not end with Piaget and Skinner; rather, through improving on their thinking, later psychologists have gained a still greater understanding of the ways that children think, learn and develop. For example, in the 1970s, an American psychologist called Arthur Bandura demonstrated that children learn through social interaction. In examining early childhood development, it is a mistake to accept the work of any one theorist as the truth. Instead, it is important to examine developmental psychology as a whole.