The British Journal of Developmental Psychology publishes full-length, empirical, conceptual, review and discussion papers, as well as brief reports, in all of the following areas:
motor, perceptual, cognitive, social and emotional development in infancy;
social, emotional and personality development in childhood, adolescence and adulthood;
cognitive and socio-cognitive development in childhood, adolescence and adulthood, including the development of language, mathematics, theory of mind, drawings, spatial cognition, biological and societal understanding;
atypical development, including developmental disorders, learning difficulties/disabilities and sensory impairments;
the impact of genetic, biological, familial, interpersonal, educational, societal and cultural factors upon human psychological development;
comparative approaches to behavioural development that help to elucidate developmental processes in humans;
theoretical approaches to development, including neo-Piagetian, information processing, naïve theory, dynamic systems, ecological and sociocultural approaches.
The following types of paper are invited:
papers reporting original empirical investigations;
theoretical papers which may be analyses of, or commentaries on, established theories in developmental psychology, or presentations of theoretical innovations, extensions or integrations;
review papers, which should aim to provide systematic overviews, analyses, evaluations or interpretations of research in a given field of developmental psychology, and identify issues requiring further research;
methodological papers dealing with any methodological issues of particular relevance to developmental psychologists.
In those cases deemed appropriate, peer commentaries on key papers/reviews will be solicited from other researchers in the relevant field. These peer commentaries will be published immediately after the target article, with the authors(s) of the article being invited to write a response to the commentaries.
Only papers which report methodologically sound and rigorous research or which make a substantive contribution to the discipline are accepted for publication in the journal.