Review of Developmental Studies on Children in Infancy, Early and Middle Childhood:

A Focus on Children’s Social Development and Their Caregivers

Abstract

  This paper reviewed developmental studies on children in infancy, early, and middle childhood. The target studies were research presentations in The Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Educational Psychology and journal articles published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, The Japanese Journal of Developmental Psychology, The Japanese Journal of Psychological Research, and Japanese Psychological Research from July 2021 to June 2022. Trends in research areas and research methods of the studies were overviewed from a quantitative perspective. It became clear that research on children's social development and research on caregivers were predominant, so an overview of journal articles in these areas was conducted. Finally, directions for future research are discussed based on the review's findings.