Conceptual Foundations of the Behavior Analysis of Child Development

Abstract

The conceptual foundations of the behavior analysis of child development are consistent with the worldview of contextualism, especially with functional contextualism. This contrasts with the received view in developmental psychology, which casts behavior analysis as mechanistic, in particular as discrete mechanism. This entry compares and contrasts the contextualism of the behavior analysis of child development with mechanism and organicism on five core developmental issues: (1) elementarism versus holism, (2) development as response‐based change versus structural change, (3) causal versus functional analysis, (4) continuity versus discontinuity, and (5) the passive versus active nature of development and related issues in agent–action locutions and the trait–situationism controversy. Next, the roles of context in the worldviews—one defining of contextualism, others not—are addressed. In conclusion, contextualism is situated among complementary perspectives in the behavioral, psychological, and social sciences—some old, some new—that distinguish them as a converging trend in developmental psychology.

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