Child Development Theories: Evidence, Uses and Limits

Child development theories are explanations of how children's thinking, behaviour, relationships and sense of right and wrong change as they grow. The best known come from Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Erik Erikson, John Bowlby, Albert Bandura, Urie Bronfenbrenner and Lawrence Kohlberg, and from the behaviourists John Watson and B. F. Skinner.

Each theory answers a different question. Piaget asked how children's reasoning changes. Bowlby asked how close bonds help a child feel safe. Skinner asked how the results of an action shape what a child does next. None of them explains a whole child on its own.

This guide gives each theory in a few paragraphs, compares them in one table and shows how they apply in early years, primary and secondary classrooms. Each section links to a full guide on that theory. The page also sits within our wider overview of theories of learning.

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What Are the Main Child Development Theories?

The main child development theories fall into eight families: cognitive, information processing, behaviourist, social learning, psychodynamic and psychosocial, attachment, ecological and moral. There is no official list. Textbooks group them in different ways, but these families cover the names that appear most often in teacher training, early years courses and exam specifications.

A theory is a set of ideas that explains a pattern and makes predictions that research can test. Some of these theories describe stages that children pass through in order. Others describe processes, such as copying a model or practising a skill, that work at any age. That difference matters in school, because a stage theory invites you to ask "is this child ready?" while a process theory invites you to ask "what would help this child learn?"

The diagram below shows the question each family asks. When you notice something about a learner, find the question that matches it.

The families overlap. A child who struggles to settle in Reception may need a steady key person (attachment), clear routines (behaviourist) and an adult who plays alongside them (Vygotsky). Using two or three lenses together usually gives a fuller picture than one.

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Child Development Theories Compared

The table compares the theories on six points: what they cover, their key idea, whether they use stages, how teachers use them and the main criticism. On a phone, each theory shows as its own card.

Two patterns stand out. The stage theories (Piaget, Freud, Erikson and Kohlberg) are the ones most often misused as age labels. The process theories (Vygotsky, Bandura, the behaviourists and information processing) are easier to turn into classroom routines, but each still needs testing in the classroom.

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Cognitive Development Theories

Cognitive theories explain how children's thinking changes. Piaget stressed what children build for themselves. Vygotsky stressed what they learn with other people. Bruner looked at the different ways an idea can be shown.

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Piaget: Children Build Their Own Understanding

Piaget's theory of cognitive development says children actively build knowledge. When a new experience fits what they already know, they take it in (assimilation). When it does not fit, they change their thinking (accommodation). Growth changes the shape of thought, not just the number of facts (Piaget, 1952).

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Piaget described four stages: sensorimotor (roughly birth to 2), preoperational (2 to 7), concrete operational (7 to 11) and formal operational (11 onwards). Treat these ages as rough guides. Later research found that children can do more than Piaget expected when a task makes sense to them, and that skills develop unevenly across subjects (Wellman and Gelman, 1992).

A well-known example is conservation. In Piaget's version, many children under about 7 say a row of counters has more when it is spread out. When a "naughty teddy" messed up the row by accident, far more children said the number was the same (McGarrigle and Donaldson, 1974). The task, not only the child's stage, shaped the answer.

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Vygotsky: Learning Happens With Others

Vygotsky's sociocultural theory says children's thinking grows through shared activity. Language, talk and other cultural tools shape how children pay attention, remember and reason. Something a child first does with an adult or a peer can later become something they do alone (Vygotsky, 1978).

The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is the gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with the right help. It is not a fixed score, and it does not mean that any group task works. Vygotsky did not use the word "scaffolding". Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) used it for adult help that changed with a child's response and then faded. For a side-by-side view of the two thinkers, see Piaget and Vygotsky compared.

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Bruner: Three Ways to Represent an Idea

Bruner's theories describe three modes of representation. The enactive mode uses action, the iconic mode uses pictures and the symbolic mode uses words and numbers (Bruner, 1966). Adults use all three, so they are not age stages.

In the classroom, this is the idea behind moving from objects to pictures to symbols, as in concrete, pictorial and abstract maths teaching. Bruner's spiral curriculum, which returns to key ideas in more depth over time, is a separate idea from the three modes.

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Information Processing Theory

Information processing theory compares the mind to a system that takes in, stores and retrieves information. In the classic model, information passes from the senses into a short-term store, and some of it moves into a long-term store (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968). The short-term store holds only a little at once, which is why a learner can follow each step of a demonstration and still lose the whole method.

This view does not use stages. It explains development as gradual gains in memory, speed and strategy. Robert Siegler found that children use several strategies at the same time, and better strategies slowly take over, like overlapping waves rather than steps on a staircase (Siegler, 2016). A study that tracked children learning times tables week by week found exactly this pattern (van der Ven et al., 2012).

For teachers, the message is to teach in small steps, reduce what learners must hold in mind at once and bring back key material over time. The main criticism is that the computer comparison leaves out emotion, motivation and culture.

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Behaviourist Theories: Watson and Skinner

Behaviourist theories explain development through learning from the environment. They focus on what can be observed, which is what children do, rather than what they think or feel. This is the "behavioural child development theory" that many courses ask about.

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Watson: Behaviour Is Learned

John B. Watson argued that psychology should study behaviour, not the mind (Watson, 1913). He believed that most of what children do is learned through conditioning, by linking one event with another. His view of development was strongly on the nurture side, which later research has not supported.

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Skinner: Consequences Shape Behaviour

Skinner's operant conditioning says that behaviour followed by a reward is more likely to happen again, and behaviour followed by nothing or by a penalty is less likely. Skinner applied this to teaching with "teaching machines" that broke material into small steps and gave instant feedback (Skinner, 1958).

Many classroom routines draw on behaviourism: clear expectations, specific praise and consistent consequences. The limits are real, though. Behaviour that lasts only while a reward is on offer has not been learned in any deep sense. Behaviourism also says little about what a child understands or why a behaviour matters to them.

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Social Learning Theory: Bandura

Bandura's social learning theory shows that children learn by watching others, not only through their own rewards. In the Bobo doll studies, children who watched an adult hit an inflatable doll often copied the attack (Bandura, Ross and Ross, 1961).

A later study changed what happened to a filmed model. Children who saw the model punished copied less at first. When they were later offered a reward, they showed they had learned the actions all along (Bandura, 1965). What a learner knows cannot always be read from what they choose to do.

Bandura later added self-efficacy: a person's belief that they can do a particular task (Bandura, 1977). It is specific to a task, so a learner can feel confident explaining a poem and unsure about starting a proof. In class, social learning is the reason modelling, worked examples and "thinking aloud" matter.

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Psychodynamic and Psychosocial Theories

These theories focus on feelings, relationships and the growing sense of self. They were very influential in the twentieth century, but they are much harder to test than the others.

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Freud: The Unconscious and Early Experience

Freud's theories proposed that early experiences and unconscious drives shape personality. He described five psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital. Few of Freud's specific claims about child development have stood up to research, and his stages are not used to plan teaching. His lasting legacy is the idea that early relationships and feelings matter, which Erikson and Bowlby developed in very different ways.

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Erikson: Eight Psychosocial Stages

Erikson's psychosocial stages describe eight tensions across the whole of life. They include trust against mistrust in infancy, industry against inferiority in primary school, and identity against role confusion in adolescence (Erikson, 1963).

Research does not support the stages as a strict timetable, and a quiet or unsettled learner does not reveal which stage they are in. The useful question for schools is simpler: does this learner have chances to belong, to succeed at something and to try out who they are?

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Attachment Theory: Bowlby and Ainsworth

Bowlby's attachment theory proposes that infants are born ready to form close bonds with the people who care for them. A secure bond gives a child a safe base to explore from and to return to when they feel threatened (Bowlby, 1982).

Mary Ainsworth and colleagues designed the Strange Situation, a short laboratory procedure with separations and reunions. From it they described secure, avoidant and resistant patterns of attachment (Ainsworth et al., 1978). These patterns belong to a particular relationship, not to a child's personality. A review of early childhood studies found both stability and change over time (Opie et al., 2021).

In early years settings, attachment theory sits behind the key person approach. The EYFS statutory framework requires that each child is assigned a key person (Department for Education, 2026). In any phase, steady and warm relationships matter.

Attachment ideas also carry real risk in school. Insecure attachment is linked with later behaviour difficulties at a group level, but that link cannot explain any one child's behaviour (Fearon et al., 2010). Teachers should describe what they see and follow their school's safeguarding and special educational needs routes. Assessment belongs to trained professionals, as NICE guidance sets out.

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Ecological and Systems Theories

These theories move the focus from inside the child to the world around them. Development happens through the child's everyday activity with people and places, and it changes over time.

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Bronfenbrenner: The Child in Context

Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory first described nested systems: the child's immediate settings, the links between them, the wider community and the culture (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). His later bioecological model put regular, everyday interactions at the centre and added the person, the context and time (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006).

Many studies cite Bronfenbrenner but use only the circles (Tudge et al., 2009). For teachers, the model is a prompt to look at the whole picture when a learner's attendance or behaviour changes. It is never a reason to blame a family, and it cannot show that one factor caused one behaviour. The model also helps with the old nature and nurture debate: the two work together rather than splitting into fixed shares.

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Developmental Systems: Many Parts Changing Together

Developmental systems accounts explain development through two-way links between the body, the brain, behaviour and the environment. Thelen and Smith showed how a skill such as reaching or walking can emerge from many parts changing together, with no single master plan (Thelen and Smith, 1994). This view treats variation between children, and within one child from day to day, as normal rather than as a sign of a hidden stage.

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Moral Development: Kohlberg

Kohlberg's stages of moral development describe six stages in three levels. At the first level, right and wrong depend on punishment and reward. At the second, they depend on relationships and rules. At the third, they depend on rights and principles (Kohlberg, 1981).

Kohlberg scored the reasons people gave, not the choices they made. Long-term research found that reasoning moved through the stages in order, though the highest stage was rare (Colby et al., 1983). Critics point out that his first samples were narrow and that justice is not the only moral concern. A later review found only small average differences between boys and girls in care and justice reasoning (Jaffee and Hyde, 2000). Reasoning well in a discussion does not guarantee behaving well.

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Are Stage Theories Still Supported?

Partly. Children's thinking does change with age in a broad order, and some tasks are much easier for older learners. In one study, 15 to 18 year olds did far better than 8 to 10 year olds on engineering tasks, and the gap in abstract reasoning grew as the tasks got harder (Cerovac and Keane, 2025).

But the idea of clean, general stages has worn badly. Brainerd (1978) argued that Piaget's stages describe changes with age without explaining them. Later work found children using different rules on the same task, sometimes changing suddenly and sometimes gradually (Jansen and van der Maas, 2002). A recent review traces how later theories reacted against Piaget's main assumptions, including stages (Rochat, 2024).

England's early years guidance says the same thing in plain words. Development Matters sets out broad ages and stages, then adds: The actual learning of young children is not so neat and orderly (Department for Education, 2023).

The block below brings together six studies on whether thinking develops in general, age-linked stages.

The practical point is to use stage ideas as a rough map, not a gate. Check what a learner can do on this task, with this support, before you decide what they are ready for.

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Using Child Development Theories in the Classroom

Teachers use these theories best as questions, not labels. Research on teacher education suggests that knowing about child development helps teachers explain what they see and choose what to try. It also warns that the knowledge is a "slippery base" that has to be checked against real children (Daniels and Shumow, 2003; Stott and Bowman, 1996).

Here is what that looks like in three phases.

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Early Years Example: Water Play in Reception

A Reception child pours water from a short, wide jug into a tall, thin one and says, "Now there's more!" A Piaget reading says this is typical of a young child's thinking. A practitioner does not simply correct it. She pours the water back and asks, "What happened? Is there more now, or the same?"

She then models the words "more", "less" and "the same" while the child pours again (Vygotsky and Bruner). Because the child's key person runs the session, the child feels safe to have a go and be wrong (Bowlby). No theory says the child must wait until age 7. The practitioner plans more pouring, talk and comparing across the week.

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Primary Example: Fractions in Year 4

A Year 4 class is comparing fractions. Several learners can order fractions with a fraction wall in front of them, but not without it. The teacher treats that as the ZPD in action. She uses paper strips first, then bar-model drawings, then symbols (Bruner). She thinks aloud through one example, including a mistake she fixes (Bandura).

Each lesson, she removes one support, such as the fraction wall and then the prompt card. A short quiz at the start of the next week checks what stuck (information processing). The theories do not tell her the pace. The learners' answers without support do.

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Secondary Example: A Year 8 Tutor Group

A Year 8 tutor notices a learner who used to join in but now sits apart and has missed several days. Bronfenbrenner's model prompts the tutor to ask what has changed around the learner, such as friendships, home routines or a new timetable, without guessing at causes. Erikson's ideas prompt a practical step: give the learner a role in the tutor group where they can succeed.

The tutor records what she sees, with dates, and talks to the pastoral lead, following school policy. In PSHE the same week, the group discusses a dilemma about loyalty in a group chat (Kohlberg). The tutor listens for reasons, not verdicts. No theory lets her diagnose the learner, and she does not try.

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Find the Right Lens for Your Question

The mini app below turns this approach into a quick planning card. Choose your phase and what you are noticing, and it suggests the theory that asks the most useful question, with one move to try.

Treat the card as a starting point. If the move does not help within a couple of weeks, try a different lens rather than pushing harder on the first one.

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What Teachers Say About These Theories

On social media, teachers rarely describe running a routine from a named theory. When they mention Piaget or Vygotsky, it is usually to question how the theories were taught to them in training. The posts below are their accounts, not research findings.

Two points from these posts match the research. Stage ages taught as fixed facts do not hold up, and scaffolding was named by Wood, Bruner and Ross, not by Piaget or Vygotsky. The attachment post shows the safer use of a theory: a way to watch and describe behaviour, not a label for a child.

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Limitations of Child Development Theories

No theory can explain one learner from a short observation. It cannot show the cause of a behaviour, diagnose attachment difficulties or a special educational need, or prove that a teaching method works. It cannot replace knowing the learner, careful assessment and advice from specialists.

Stage labels are the biggest risk. A rough stage is not a ceiling, and a learner who seems "not ready" may succeed with a familiar task or better support. Do not hold back curriculum content because a learner appears to be at an earlier stage.

Some ideas often linked with child development theories are not supported at all. Matching teaching to "learning styles" or treating Maslow's hierarchy as a strict order in which learning must wait are two examples. Reviews found little evidence for either kind of claim (Wahba and Bridwell, 1976; Waterhouse, 2006).

Finally, a theory is not a trial. Grouping, feedback, modelling and behaviour systems all need evidence from classrooms, and a famous name cannot stand in for that evidence.

Try one lens this week. Pick a learner you are puzzling over, choose the question that fits what you have seen and keep one change going for two weeks.

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Frequently Asked Questions

These answers cover the questions people most often ask about child development theories, from how many there are to how teachers should use them.

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What are the main child development theories?

The main theories are Piaget's cognitive theory, Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, Bruner's modes of representation, information processing theory, behaviourism (Watson and Skinner), Bandura's social learning theory, Freud's psychosexual theory, Erikson's psychosocial stages, Bowlby's attachment theory, Bronfenbrenner's ecological model and Kohlberg's moral stages.

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What are the 4 main theories of development?

There is no agreed set of four. Courses often pick cognitive (Piaget), sociocultural (Vygotsky), behaviourist (Skinner) and psychosocial (Erikson), or swap in attachment (Bowlby) or social learning (Bandura). The four you are asked about depend on your course.

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What is the behavioural theory of child development?

The behavioural theory says children's behaviour is learned from the environment through conditioning. Watson focused on links between events, and Skinner showed that consequences make a behaviour more or less likely. It explains routines and habits well but says little about thinking or feelings.

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How do theories of development influence current practice?

They sit behind many everyday routines: the key person in early years (attachment), concrete to abstract maths (Bruner and Piaget), scaffolding that fades (Vygotsky), modelling (Bandura) and clear routines with specific praise (behaviourism). Good practice uses them as questions and checks the results with real learners.

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Are stage theories supported by evidence?

Partly. Thinking does change with age in a broad order, but research finds more variation by task and support than strict stages predict. Treat stage ages as rough guides, not readiness tests.

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Can a teacher diagnose attachment difficulties?

No. Teachers can build steady relationships, describe what they see and record concerns. Assessment belongs to trained professionals, and concerns should go through the school's safeguarding or special educational needs route.

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Is child development nature or nurture?

Both, working together. Genes, the body, relationships, culture and experience interact over time, and their roles vary from one skill to another. No fixed percentage can be given to each.

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References

These references include only the sources cited above. Links go to the publisher, the DOI record or the official guidance page.

• Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E. and Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment. Erlbaum.
• Atkinson, R. C. and Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 2, 89 to 195.
• Bandura, A. (1965). Influence of models' reinforcement contingencies on the acquisition of imitative responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1, 589 to 595.
• Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84, 191 to 215.
• Bandura, A., Ross, D. and Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575 to 582.
• Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and Loss, Volume 1. Basic Books.
• Brainerd, C. J. (1978). The stage question in cognitive-developmental theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1, 173 to 182.
• Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development. Harvard University Press.
• Bronfenbrenner, U. and Morris, P. A. (2007). The Bioecological Model of Human Development. Online DOI record for the chapter published in the 2006 Handbook of Child Psychology.
• Bruner, J. S. (1966). Toward a Theory of Instruction. Harvard University Press.
• Cerovac, M. and Keane, T. (2025). Early insights into Piaget's cognitive development model through the lens of the Technologies curriculum. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 35, 61 to 81.
• Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Gibbs, J. and Lieberman, M. (1983). A Longitudinal Study of Moral Judgment. Society for Research in Child Development.
• Daniels, D. H. and Shumow, L. (2003). Child development and classroom teaching: a review of the literature and implications for educating teachers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 23, 495 to 526.
• Department for Education (2023). Development Matters: non-statutory curriculum guidance for the early years foundation stage. GOV.UK.
• Department for Education (2026). Early years foundation stage statutory framework for group and school-based providers. GOV.UK.
• Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and Society. Norton.
• Fearon, R. P. et al. (2010). The significance of insecure attachment and disorganization in the development of children's externalizing behavior: a meta-analytic study. Child Development, 81, 435 to 456.
• Jaffee, S. and Hyde, J. S. (2000). Gender differences in moral orientation: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 703 to 726.
• Jansen, B. R. J. and van der Maas, H. L. J. (2002). The development of children's rule use on the balance scale task. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 81, 383 to 416.
• Kohlberg, L. (1981). The Philosophy of Moral Development. Harper and Row.
• McGarrigle, J. and Donaldson, M. (1974). Conservation accidents. Cognition, 3, 341 to 350.
• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Children's attachment: recommendations.
• Opie, J. E. et al. (2020). Early childhood attachment stability and change: a meta-analysis. Online publication; Attachment and Human Development issue published in 2021.
• Piaget, J. (1952). The Origins of Intelligence in Children. International Universities Press.
• Rochat, P. (2024). The evolution of developmental theories since Piaget: A metaview. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 19, 921 to 930.
• Siegler, R. S. (2016). Continuity and change in the field of cognitive development and in the perspectives of one cognitive developmentalist. Child Development Perspectives, 10, 128 to 133.
• Skinner, B. F. (1958). Teaching machines. Science, 128, 969 to 977.
• Stott, F. and Bowman, B. (1996). Child development knowledge: A slippery base for practice. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 11, 169 to 183.
• Thelen, E. and Smith, L. B. (1994). A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action. MIT Press.
• Tudge, J. R. H. et al. (2009). Uses and Misuses of Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Theory of Human Development. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 1, 198 to 210.
• van der Ven, S. H. G., Boom, J., Kroesbergen, E. H. and Leseman, P. P. M. (2012). Microgenetic patterns of children's multiplication learning: Confirming the overlapping waves model by latent growth modeling. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 113, 1 to 19.
• Vygotsky, L. S. (1980). Mind in Society. Digital DOI record of the 1978 Harvard University Press book.
• Wahba, M. A. and Bridwell, L. G. (1976). Maslow reconsidered: A review of research on the need hierarchy theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 15, 212 to 240.
• Waterhouse, L. (2006). Multiple intelligences, the Mozart effect, and emotional intelligence: A critical review. Educational Psychologist, 41, 207 to 225.
• Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20, 158 to 177.
• Wellman, H. M. and Gelman, S. A. (1992). Cognitive Development: Foundational Theories of Core Domains. Annual Review of Psychology, 43, 337 to 375.
• Wood, D., Bruner, J. S. and Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17, 89 to 100.