Martha Muchow, 1892–1933: Her Life, Work, and Contribution to Developmental and Ecological Psychology

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Abstract
This symposium is devoted to the German child psychologist Martha Muchow, a student and associate of WilliamStern and Heinz Werner at the University of Hamburg from 1919 until her premature death in 1933. Her work, in particular her monograph on The lifespaceofthe urban child, deserves the attention of contemporary developmental and environmental psychologists for its imaginative and effective integration of developmental and ecological approaches to the study of children’s knowledge of and interaction with their physical surroundings. Wohlwill provides a brief biographical sketch and describes the research contributions made by Muchow and discusses the content of her investigation of the environmental experience of a group of urban children and their activities in diverse settings. The themes and influences in this work are commented upon by the other contributors. Wapner examines Muchow’s work from the perspective of Werner’s organismic-developmental theory, in terms of its stress on the environment as perceived and experienced by the child, and its relevance to Werner’s concept of differing ‘spheres of reality’. He points out how problems and issues that Muchow dealt with are being picked up in current research. Schoggen, from the perspective of ecological psychology, shows how Muchow’s observations of urban children’s use of their environment, and her close attention to relevant features of the physical environment at a molar level, anticipate many recent developments in ecological psychology. Siegel considers further aspects of Muchow’s work of relevance for developmental psychology, including her emphasis on the contextual matrix of child behavior, her interest in the sphere of children’s action in relation to their cognition of the environment, and methodological issues to which a close reading of her work can alert us.

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