Arnold Gesell

(1880–1961).
An American psychologist and pediatrician whose principal area of study was the mental and physical development of normal individuals from birth through adolescence.

Arnold Gesell was born on June 21, 1880, in Alma, Wisconsin, and received his bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin. In 1906, he earned his Ph.D. from Clark University, where he was motivated to specialize in child development by studying with the prominent American psychologist G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924). Gesell received his M.D. from Yale University in 1915. After briefly holding a position at the Los Angeles State Normal School, he was appointed an assistant professor at Yale University, where he established the Clinic of Child Development and served as its director from 1911 to 1948. He was later a consultant with the Gesell Institute of Child Development. Gesell's early work involved the study of mental retardation in children, but he soon became convinced that an understanding of normal development was necessary for the understanding of abnormal development.

Gesell was among the first to implement a quantitative study of human development from birth through adolescence, focusing his research on the extensive study of a small number of children. He began with preschool children and later extended his work to ages 5–10 and 10–16. From his findings, Gesell concluded that the processes by which infants, children, and adolescents develop mentally and physically are comparable and parallel.




Dr. Arnold Gessell studying behavior of six months old baby by handing her a bell to see how well she uses her hands.





Dr. Arnold Gessell studying behavior of six months old baby by handing her a bell to see how well she uses her hands.
(© Herbert Gehr/Contributor/Getty Images)

In his clinic, he trained researchers to collect data and produced reports that had a widespread influence on both parents and educators. The results of his research were used in creating the Gesell Development Schedules, which can be applied to children between four weeks and six years of age. The tests measure responses to standardized materials and situations both qualitatively and quantitatively. Areas emphasized include motor and language development, adaptive behavior, and personal-social behavior. The results of the test are expressed first as developmental age (DA), which is then converted into developmental quotient (DQ), representing the portion of normal development that is present at any age. A separate developmental quotient may be obtained for each of the functions on which the scale is built.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Gesell was widely regarded as the nation's foremost authority on child rearing and development, and developmental quotients based on his development schedules were widely used as an assessment of children's intelligence. He wrote several bestselling books, including Infant and Child in the Culture of Today (1943) and The Child from Five to Ten (1946), both coauthored with Frances Lillian Ilg (1902–1981). Gesell argued, in widely read publications, that the raising children requires reasonable guidance rather than permissiveness or rigidity. His influence was also felt through the many child psychologists and pediatricians he helped to educate.

Eventually, the preeminence of Gesell's ideas gave way to theories that stress the importance of environmental rather than internal elements in child development, as the ideas of Jerome S. Bruner (1915–) and Jean Piaget (1896–1980) gained prominence. Gesell was criticized for basing his work too narrowly on observation of a small number of research subjects who were all children of white, middle-class parents in a single New England city. He was also faulted for allowing too little leeway for individual and cultural differences in growth patterns.

Although the developmental quotient is no longer accepted as a valid measure of intellectual ability, Gesell remains an important pioneer in child development and is recognized for his advances in the methodology of observing and measuring behavior. He inaugurated the use of video and photography in addition to observation through one-way mirrors as research tools. Gesell was a prolific author; his books include An Atlas of Infant Behavior (1934) and Youth: The Years from Ten to Sixteen (1956). He died on May 29, 1961, in New Haven, Connecticut, at the age of 80. The Gesell Institute of Human Development was founded in 1950 by two of Gesell's former students and colleagues, Ilg and Louise Bates Ame, along with Janet Learned. Gesell served as a research consultant there until his death. The institute was renamed the Gesell Institute of Child Development in 2012 and continues to promote the principals of child development as tools for decision making for young children.

See also Child development ; Infancy .

Resources

BOOKS

Ames, Louise Bates. Arnold Gesell: Themes of His Work. New York: Human Sciences Press, 1989.

Gesell, Arnold. The Child from Five to Ten, Rev. ed. New York, Harper & Row, 1977.

Gesell, Arnold. Infant and Child in the Culture of Today: The Guidance of Development in Home and Nursery School, Rev. ed. Northvale, NJ: Aronson, 1995.

PERIODICALS

Curtis, Scott. “Tangible as Tissue: Arnold Gesell, Infant Behavior, and Film Analysis.” Science in Context 24, no. 3 (2011): 417–42.

Guddemi, Marcy, et al. “Arnold Gesell's Developmental Assessment Revalidation Substantiates Child-Oriented Curriculum.” SAGE Open. (April-June 2014): 1–18.

WEBSITES

Gesell Institute. “History.” http://www.gesellinstitute.org/about-us/history (accessed July 24, 2015).

Miles, Walter R. “Arnold Lucius Gesell: 1880–1961.” National Academy of Sciences. http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/gesell-arnold.pdf (accessed July 24, 2015).

Yale School of Medicine. “Arnold L. Gesell, Ph.D., M.D.” http://www.childstudycenter.yale.edu/centennial/exhibit/gesell.aspx (accessed July 24, 2015).

ORGANIZATIONS

Gesell Institute of Child Development, 310 Prospect St., New Haven, CT, 06511, (203) 777-3481, (800) 369-7709, Fax: (203) 776-5001.