Frequency of Citation in Child Psychology Literature

To find which contributors in child psychology have been cited more often during approximately the last 20 years, references in 12 textbooks and 2 jourals of child development were tallied. Self-references were excluded. Authors were ranked according to their frequency of citation, and their relative positions discussed in terms of discrepancies between journal and textbook citations. Weaknesses of the criterion-frequency of citation-were discussed in relation to theoretical and empirical contributions.