Abstract
As in childhood sociology a paradigm shift has occurred in developmental psychology. This chapter searches for an eventual child perspective and children’s perspectives within a contextualistic and relational understanding of children. First, it is clarified if a child perspective is present at all in contemporary developmental psychology. Second, the focus is on the child paradigm in contextual–relational psychology. Third, the importance of phenomenology in the contextual approach is addressed. This leads to the formulation of some necessary distinct criteria for taking a psychological child perspective. An empirical Example of the pre-verbal infant’s intersubjective world is presented in order to show some problems and promises inherent in a child perspective approach.
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Notes
- 1.
Mainstream textbooks present the essential and reliable knowledge available – “the state of the art”.
- 2.
The point of view changes considerably depending on whether the talk is of a perspective on children or with children.
- 3.
Later in this part we will provide specific Examples of recent key concepts in developmental psychology that have introduced a completely new paradigm of children and their development. However, it still remains an open question whether and when such concepts may be referred to as actual child perspectives. Whether this is a case or not will be pursued later on.
- 4.
Please note that this “new” change in research was developed in the 1970s and 1980s. The same argument goes for the “new” child paradigm within childhood sociology that took place back in the 1990s. Anyway, the term “new” has obviously come to stay. For childhood sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and others outside psychology the paradigm shift within developmental psychology may represent new knowledge.
- 5.
Krøjgaard uses this Example in his Discussion of ecological validity in relation to experimental infant research. Here, it is used in a different context: in a Discussion of the criteria for identifying a child perspective in contextual developmental psychology.
- 6.
This sort of critical examination should not only apply to developmental psychology but also to any discipline that claims to be a child perspective.
- 7.
People construct configurations out of what they perceive, even of phenomena that are unrelated. We “see” the constellation the Big Dipper, even though we know that the seven points that form the constellation are millions of kilometres apart in three-dimensional space. In fact, the seven stars are no more related to each other than to any other stars in the sky.
- 8.
One premise underlying this research was that the face is more than a “social medium”. The face also directly reflects the infant’s inner emotional states. Thus, long before children are able to express their feelings verbally, their facial expressions (and accompanying gestures) mirror their phenomenological constitution.
- 9.
A reminder from the earlier Discussion: Intentions turn into endeavours, and this makes it possible to observe the infant’s inner states. These chronological interaction sequences therefore enable us to observe how the infant’s intentions are converted to acts within the social context.
- 10.
Infant research uses studies in natural situations as well as lab experiments. The contextual approach does not rule out lab studies per se. The criterion is rather whether or not the lab setting is “ecologically valid” (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The lab offers a different type of physical and social setting for studying children and infants, which is different from the natural situation.
- 11.
In Diary of a Baby Stern (1991) avoids scientific jargon. The book is a wonderful, poetic attempt at describing an actual infant’s experience of himself or herself and the environment.
- 12.
Infancy is particularly prone to be a projection mirror. One Example among many is the psychoanalyst Mahler’s (1988) theory of the existence of a “normal autistic” phase early in human life. This notion has been swept away by current empirical research and should be seen as a theoretical projection on the infant (Sommer, 2005a). Indeed, Mahler had no systematic empirical findings from earliest infancy to support her assumption. Careful studies of infants and children do not eliminate the danger of theoretical projection, but they are able to reduce it.
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Sommer, D., Samuelsson, I.P., Hundeide, K. (2010). In Search of Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Contextual–Relational Developmental Psychology. In: Child Perspectives and Children's Perspectives in Theory and Practice. International perspectives on early childhood education and development, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3316-1_3
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