Urie Bronfenbrenner developed the ecological systems theory of child development, which sees development as being shaped by interactions between individuals and their environments across multiple levels, from immediate relationships to broader cultural influences. His theory identified five environmental systems - microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem - that influence development. Bronfenbrenner argued that developmental psychology had traditionally studied children in artificial settings and failed to account for important social and environmental factors.