Do modern developmental psychology theories reflect the possible richness of the 'environment' OR the rich, often subtle, behavioral response patterns?
[ I have 'environment' in quotes because this is, of course, the present physical environment AND also how that is richly contextualized by our Memories -- the latter being as much part of the environment. ]
My answer to the question is: "No." And the reason is simple: The first task of a science is to properly embrace (and represent) ALL of the relevant phenomenology it addresses. Modern psychology theories all clearly fail at this, and especially theories of child development (ontogeny) -- which is a main core of the failings of the other theories (e.g. personality theories, learning theories, etc., etc. ).
[ Example of the Problems: In my view: When we start to really come to know 'learning', we no doubt will know it is actually 'learnings" (qualitatively different at each level/stage). With this knowledge we will come to see that IN THIS INFANT SCIENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY WE MOST OFTEN (IN THE MAIN) DO NOT EVEN KNOW WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT WHEN WE SPEAK IN TERMS OF "LEARNING". ]
The main reason for the major failure is: inability to properly represent covert behavior ("cognition") AND provide ANY sufficient (or ANY) good empirical foundation for it -- in my view, no doubt these are highly-related matters. Basically in today's theories, even the neo-Piagetian theories, major qualitative changes "JUST HAPPEN" -- in Piaget's theory these are the major stage changes Piaget never explained and just basically said are "due to maturation" (aka equilibration type 2) (and that's all). He, like others then and now, then looked for elaborate WAYS of thought-processing (largely "in itself") which (supposedly) yield the full range of human processing and analysis abilities (representation, thinking, and understanding). Such accounts are of "things" VERY, VERY unlikely OR impossible, given the good knowledge we have of the Memories and given the universality of cognitive abilities. But, just as important: these accounts are UNINTELLIGIBLE, because of a lack of key-point directly observable proximate causes (