A vast multidisciplinary area of study that includes, for example, child psychology, child psychiatry, developmental psychology, and paediatrics as well as various sub-fields of biological and cultural anthropology, linguistics, neuroscience and sociology. It is distinguished by methodological pluralism (e.g., experimental and correlational methods), and a range of theoretical and applied concerns. There tends to be a divide between research carried out during and beyond infancy, especially with regard to cognitive development, and some (e.g., Society for Research in Child Development) contend that child development does not include the period of adolescence. In recent years, there has been a noticeable tendency for the study of child development to incorporate theory and findings from evolutionary developmental biology, as well as concerted efforts to relate prenatal and postnatal development in terms of identifying the continuities and discontinuities between them. In the US, the study of child development received formal recognition with the establishment of a sub-committee of the National Research Council in 1922, which three years later became the Committee in Child Development with offices and staff housed at the National Academy of Sciences.
See Anthropology, Child psychology, Developmental biology, Developmental cognitive neuroscience, Developmental psychology, Evolutionary developmental biology, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Pediatrics, Sociology