Baby biography psychology

Inspired by this post, we've decided to devote a week to the analysis of studies from the history of psychology.

Today we consider the work of Millicent Washburn Shinn, one of the first women admitted to the University of California, Berkeley (in 1874), and the first to earn a Ph.D.

Baby biography psychology

there. In 1890, her niece Ruth was born, and Shinn spent hours carefully observing the child's every behavior. This "large mass of data" became the basis for a book that was welcomed by the scholars of the day, The Biography of a Baby, which, while not the first of its kind, certainly was one of the most thorough scientific accounts of a baby's cognitive and physical development in its time.

Shinn describes Ruth's sixth month as "The Dawn of Intelligence." Prior to this time, the baby was primarily exploring her senses, but in the sixth month, Ruth exhibited behaviors that Shinn interpreted as "intelligent." The first example of this is something most people would not categorize this way: toe sucking