To put it bluntly, for much of this century, developmental
psychologists have carried out their research much like the
metaphorical goldfish swims around the goldfish bowl, oblivious to the
water that sustains both themselves and their subjects. Observable interactions are likely to have unobservable determinants
in the histories of individuals. The social world influences the individual not only through the agency
of flesh-and-blood people who converse, communicate, model or
persuade, but through the social practices and objects unseen people
have built up in the world around that individual (White, 1996).