In the introduction to his book, Mental Development in the Child and the Race, Baldwin (1895) articulated that the major goal of this work was to outline a system of genetic (i.e., developmental) psychology that would achieve a “synthesis of the current biological theory of organic adaptation with the doctrine of the infant's development” (p. vii). However, Baldwin asserted that much more knowledge about the process of brain development needed to be discovered before the study of child development and neurobiological growth could be integrated in a manner commensurate with the complexity of the developing child and nervous system.

Similar to Baldwin's belief on brain-behavior relations, in 1894 Freud stated that biological knowledge had not progressed far enough to prove helpful to psychoanalysis (Kandel, 1999). However, in his developmental theory of psychoanalysis, Freud was deeply aware that advances in biology would likely make critical contributions to the comprehension of mental processes. For example, in On Narcissism, Freud (1914) expressed the viewpoint that the entirety of our provisional ideas in psychology would one day be based on an organic substructure. Relatedly, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud (1920) stated that the deficiencies in our understanding would probably disappear if we were currently in a position to replace psychological terms with physiological or chemical ones.

During the 1920s and 1930s, an integration of developmental psychology with the study of brain maturation appeared to be on the verge of flourishing. Leonard Carmichael (1926, 1933) and Arnold Gesell (1929, 1933) conjectured that the physiological maturation of the brain was responsible for the development of some of the skills that emerge during childhood. Jean Piaget, too, was intrigued with the theoretical implications that brain phylogenesis might hold for child development (Segalowitz, 1994); however, like Baldwin and Freud before him, Piaget believed that a neuropsychological theory of development was not possible at the time because the field did not possess enough knowledge about brain development and brain function to articulate their role in the genesis and epigenesis of mental processes (Piaget, 1947/1966; Piaget & Inhelder, 1966/1969).

Since the time of Myrtle McGraw (1932), there has been a tradition in the field of human development to seek explanation at the neural level—that is, to discover an observed change in behavior and attribute its emergence as being the result of a preceding change in the brain. Historically, the appearance of isolated anatomic findings, such as the presence of myelin and neuronal distribution in various areas of the brain, has been used to explain the emergence of behavior (Conel, 1939–1967; Parmalee & Sigman, 1983; Yakovlev & LeCours, 1967). This point of view exists in some contemporary circles. For example, although their hypothesis is now discounted, as recently as a decade ago Diamond and Goldman-Rakic (1989) suggested that the massive reorganization of synaptic connections in the prefrontal cortex caused the improvements in spatial cognition, the onset of language, and the development of inhibition of prepotent response tendencies displayed by 8- to 12month-old infants. Likewise, Thatcher (1991, 1992) has contended that Piagetian cognitive stages develop as a result of stagelike changes in brain activity. . .

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