HISTORY OF IHD

Exploring Human Development - Contexts and Individual Potentials

The Institute of Human Development has sparked pioneering studies - since 1927 - of individual development from newborns to adolescents to the elderly. Institute members and students explore the biological, psychological, social and cultural forces that shape human growth. We are united by our commitment to understanding the individual's developmental capacities and how diverse contexts shape the vitality of children and adults. One of the University's first research centers, IHD hosts an interdisciplinary community of scientists, including young scholars and students who shape path-breaking research, innovative programs, and policy options.

A Distinguished History

In 1922 Jean Walker Macfarlane earned the second Ph.D. awarded by Berkeley in the young field of psychology. Five years later she established the Institute of Human Development, originally called the Institute of Child Welfare. She initiated the Guidance Study in 1928, just prior to the Great Depression, a longitudinal study of 250 infants born in the Berkeley area. Harold E. Jones launched a parallel study shortly thereafter, what became known as the Oakland Growth Study. One well-know analysis, Children of the Great Depression by sociologist Glenn Elder, delved into the severe vulnerabilities experienced by adolescents, stung by their family uncertainties and watching their fathers going off to war.

These longitudinal studies allowed Prof. Jones and IHD colleagues to study human learning and maturation at various stages of development, often tracking growth in physical, cognitive, and social-emotional domains. Studies of inherited traits blossomed, including a painstaking study of how twins display similar eye-movements. Prof. Jones tracked five separate samples of young children enrolled in the education department's nursery school during the 1930s, including a matched control group. He failed to detect positive developmental effects, while recognizing how many children enrolled came from well educated families (what became known as selection bias).

This early work established IHD as a bold intellectual center - hosting empirical work on questions around genetics and in-born human capacities, to the consequential effects of contexts and institutions on the development of children, adolescents, and adults

Psychologists Jack and Jeanne Block would also draw on these original family samples, asking how the period of adolescence comes to shape individuals as they enter middle-age. Prof. Block and other IHD scholars pressed on the assumption that one's personality is set, and can be measured, at a young age and then remains constant throughout life. He tested the counter assertion that individual adapt to widely varying social environments which change over time, leading to shifting identities and core relationships.

Dr. Diana Baumrind would dig into these unprecedented data to distinguish types of parenting, which resulted in differing behavior and motivational patterns in children and adolescents. Her typology of authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive child rearing continues to shape how parents and practitioners think about socialization in the home.

Each of these pioneers emphasized the importance of longitudinal data in understanding the how the child's or adult's environs change over time, prompting new adaptations and learning, constrained or enhanced by their developmental capacities. They also discovered how the attributes of children arriving to an organized intervention, like child care or preschool, must be taken into account before effects can be attributed to the program. IHD scholars pushed forward on these methodological and statistical issues, as well as devising and testing new ways of assessing children's multifaceted skills and capacities. Nancy Bayley designed novel ways of assessing the early cognitive growth of infants and toddlers, yielding widely used measures. The Harold E. Jones Child Study Center was opened in 1960 as a working nursery school, and serving as a site to observe young children at work and play, and to field test new early childhood programs. Prof. George De Vos joined the Institute in the mid-1960s to study juvenile delinquency from a cross-cultural perspective, moving beyond normative psychology.

IHD Today

Today, IHD hosts a colorful array of scholars conducting work on development across the age span and digging into questions from various theoretical and philosophical traditions, including cultural studies, psychology, public health, sociology, and neuroscience.

Sylvia Bunge is studying how children's brains development when exposed to high-quality after school programs. Allison Gopnik details how infants come to see that others view the world differently, and bridging this gap spur growth in social cognition. Steve Hinshaw is advancing knowledge of the behavioral and neurological results of ADHD, suffered by children of all ages. Elliot Turiel is illuminating the moral reasoning capacity of adolescents and adults around the globe.

Joe Campos continues to delve into the development of infants, including what he calls the "psychological revolution" that unfolds with the onset of crawling and the child's earliest understanding of human movement that they can control. Carla Hudson Kam does pioneering work on how humans learn languages, especially why children appear to be better than adults at this essential developmental task.

IHD is dedicated to applying new scientific discovering to the problems facing America's children and families. Phil and Carolyn Cowan, for instance, are running a randomized clinical trial to evaluate how counseling groups for fathers and couples strengthen low-income families, situated in diverse urban communities. The groups, led by trained mental health professionals, are boosting fathers' daily involvement with their children and enriching parents' relationships, significantly lowering the behavior and emotional problems emerging with their children.

Recent Institute books inform a variety of questions being debates in civil society, from how to build early childhood programs that respond to the nation's diverse families, to the painful problems facing teenage girls, to how educators might enrich the moral reasoning of children and youths. IHD hosts an innovative effort to distill and communicate new findings on Latino children and schools to journalists and policy makers.

The Harold Jones Center - the experimental nursery school begun a half-century ago - has spawn eight campus centers for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers across the Berkeley campus. These centers offer quality care for children and research sites for university faculty and students.

Visit our full listing of current research projects, weekly activities at IHD, and how institute members and students are engaging civic debate over how to enrich the daily environments in which children are raised, and adults continues to grow.