Learning About Development from Interventions

Abstract

In this review, we argue that the role of causally informative evaluations of interventions within developmental psychology should be elevated. Causally informative research on the effects of intervention inputs on medium- and long-term outcomes are sufficiently relevant to developmental psychology to inform or even constrain our theories and to inspire future developmental research. We review several examples of research that yielded developmental insights from such work and discuss a broad theoretical framework for using developmental theory to reason about the effects of interventions and vice versa. Finally, we discuss potential challenges that have inhibited the role of causally informative research on interventions in developmental psychology along with actionable steps researchers can take to integrate such work more deeply into the field.