Huang Yi (November 8, 1903 – October 18, 1944) was a Chinese child psychologist. After study at Tsinghua University and Stanford University, he pursued his doctorate at Yale, where he obtained his PhD in 1930 under the supervision of Arnold Gesell. Returning to China, he focused on child psychology. His research was affected by poverty and the Second Sino-Japanese War, and he died of cancer in 1944. His wartime findings were published posthumously in the American Journal of General Psychology.
Huang Yi | |
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| Born | November 8, 1903 Xiamen, Fujian, Qing China |
| Died | October 18, 1944 (aged 40) Zunyi, Guizhou, Republic of China |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Tsinghua University, Stanford University, Yale University (PhD) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Psychologist |
| Sub-discipline | Child psychologist |
| Institutions | Zhejiang University |
| Huang Yi | |||||||||
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| Chinese | 黄翼 | ||||||||
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Biography
editHuang Yi was born in Xiamen, Fujian, on 8 November 1903. Graduating from Tsinghua University in 1924, he traveled to the United States, where he studied psychology at Stanford. Upon receiving his master's degree in 1928, he pursued a PhD in child psychology at Yale University under pediatrician Arnold Gesell. While at Yale, he also worked alongside Smith College psychologist Kurt Koffka. Huang received his doctorate for his dissertation Children’s Explanations of Strange Phenomena in 1930.[1][2]
After completing his PhD, Huang returned to China and became a professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, where he founded the university's psychology laboratory. He promoted theories of early childhood education strongly inspired by his American contemporaries.[1][2] In 1937, he published Psychological Understandings of Children’s Drawings. Published by Commercial Press, the book analyzes drawings by children from Henghe Elementary School in early 1936. Huang lays out a schema for the evolution of children's drawings over time, from an initial "scribbling period" to maturity.[3]
Huang's research was severely impacted by poverty and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War. He was diagnosed with cancer, further impeding his work. Despite this, he continued to conduct psychology research. He tried to publish his findings in 1941, but was blocked by Academia Sinica psychologist Wang Jingxi, who criticized Huang's writing and dismissed the paper as largely repeating existing findings. Huang again attempted to publish his work in 1943 under a different state-run journal, but it was again reviewed and rejected by Wang. Stressing that replicating existing studies was valuable, and that further research possibilities were limited during the war, he appealed to his former classmate Siegen K. Chou to mediate. Chou wrote in favor of Huang, and both academic outlets offered to publish his papers; however, Huang rejected them and instead submitted his findings to the American Journal of General Psychology. Huang died in Zunyi, Guizhou, on 18 October 1944, before his articles were published. They were accepted into the journal by his former professor, Gesell.[4]
References
edit- ^ a b Chen & Guo 2024, p. 1.
- ^ a b Tardif & Miao 2000, pp. 68–69.
- ^ Jones 2011, pp. 99–102.
- ^ Yan & Gao 2017, p. 568.
Works cited
edit- Chen, Xuexun; Guo, Siping (2024). "Huang I". In Zhang, Kan (ed.). The ECPH Encyclopedia of Psychology. Singapore: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-981-99-6000-2_131-1. ISBN 9789819960002.
- Jones, Andrew F. (2011). Developmental Fairy Tales: Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674047952. JSTOR j.ctt24hgz4.
- Tardif, Twila; Miao, Xiaochun (2000). "Developmental Psychology in China". International Journal of Behavioral Development. 24 (1): 68–72. doi:10.1080/016502500383485.
- Yan, Shu-Chang; Gao, Zhipeng (2017). "信札中的微观心理学历史：黄翼形重错觉研究报告的曲折境遇" [A Microhistory of Psychology in Letters: What Happened to I. Huang’s Research Reports on the Size-Weight Illusion?]. Acta Psychologica Sinica (in Chinese). 49 (4): 554–668. doi:10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00554. hdl:10315/33886.