Developmental psychology
[3][4] Within these three dimensions are a broad range of topics including motor skills, executive functions, moral understanding, language acquisition, social change, personality, emotional development, self-concept, and identity formation.
Many researchers are interested in the interactions among personal characteristics, the individual's behavior, and environmental factors, including the social context and the built environment.
[7] In the mid-18th century, Jean Jacques Rousseau described three stages of development: infants (infancy), puer (childhood) and adolescence in Emile: Or, On Education.
Developmental psychology generally focuses on how and why certain changes (cognitive, social, intellectual, personality) occur over time in the course of a human life.
James Mark Baldwin, who wrote essays on topics that included Imitation: A Chapter in the Natural History of Consciousness and Mental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes, was significantly involved in the theory of developmental psychology.
[13] Jean Piaget, a Swiss theorist, posited that children learn by actively constructing knowledge through their interactions with their physical and social environments.
[16] Expanding on Piaget's work, Lawrence Kohlberg determined that the process of moral development was principally concerned with justice, and that it continued throughout the individual's lifetime.
[20] Michael Commons enhanced and simplified Bärbel Inhelder and Piaget's developmental theory and offers a standard method of examining the universal pattern of development.
The exosystem is the interaction among two or more settings that are indirectly linked (example: a father's job requiring more overtime ends up influencing his daughter's performance in school because he can no longer help with her homework).
[23] Lev Vygotsky was a Russian theorist from the Soviet era, who posited that children learn through hands-on experience and social interactions with members of their culture.
[29] Evolutionary developmental psychology is a research paradigm that applies the basic principles of Darwinian evolution, particularly natural selection, to understand the development of human behavior and cognition.
[30] EDP considers both the reliably developing, species-typical features of ontogeny (developmental adaptations), as well as individual differences in behavior, from an evolutionary perspective.
While evolutionary views tend to regard most individual differences as the result of either random genetic noise (evolutionary byproducts)[31] and/or idiosyncrasies (for example, peer groups, education, neighborhoods, and chance encounters)[32] rather than products of natural selection, EDP asserts that natural selection can favor the emergence of individual differences via "adaptive developmental plasticity".
[30] EDP is closely linked to the theoretical framework of evolutionary psychology (EP), but is also distinct from EP in several domains, including research emphasis (EDP focuses on adaptations of ontogeny, as opposed to adaptations of adulthood) and consideration of proximate ontogenetic and environmental factors (i.e., how development happens) in addition to more ultimate factors (i.e., why development happens), which are the focus of mainstream evolutionary psychology.
Today developmental psychologists rarely take such polarized positions with regard to most aspects of development; rather they investigate, among many other things, the relationship between innate and environmental influences.
Chomsky's critique of the behaviorist model of language acquisition is regarded by many as a key turning point in the decline in the prominence of the theory of behaviorism generally.
Mathematical modeling is useful in developmental psychology for implementing theory in a precise and easy-to-study manner, allowing generation, explanation, integration, and prediction of diverse phenomena.
Nonlinear dynamic systems is currently being explored as a way to explain discrete phenomena of human development such as affect,[55] second language acquisition,[56] and locomotion.
Other accounts, such as that of Lev Vygotsky, have suggested that development does not progress through stages, but rather that the developmental process that begins at birth and continues until death is too complex for such structure and finality.
[75] The case study approach allows investigations to obtain an in-depth understanding of an individual participant by collecting data based on interviews, structured questionnaires, observations, and test scores.
This generally requires fewer resources than the longitudinal method, and because the individuals come from different cohorts, shared historical events are not so much of a confounding factor.
Based on recent findings, some researchers (such as Elizabeth Spelke and Renee Baillargeon) have proposed that an understanding of object permanence is not learned at all, but rather comprises part of the innate cognitive capacities of our species.
[107] Other research has suggested that young infants in their first six months of life may possess an understanding of numerous aspects of the world around them, including: There are critical periods in infancy and childhood during which development of certain perceptual, sensorimotor, social and language systems depends crucially on environmental stimulation.
An important characteristic of this age period is the development of language, where children are learning how to communicate and express their emotions and desires through the use of vocal sounds, babbling, and eventually words.
For Erik Erikson, the psychosocial crisis during middle childhood is Industry vs. Inferiority which, if successfully met, instills a sense of Competency in the child.
Successfully navigating this stage builds the groundwork for good psychological development in adulthood, allowing people to pursue meaningful relationships, make positive contributions to society, and handle life's adversities with perseverance and purpose.
[133] Early adulthood generally refers to the period between ages 18 to 39,[134] and according to theorists such as Erik Erikson, is a stage where development is mainly focused on maintaining relationships.
Sexual responsiveness can also be affected, including delays in erection and longer periods of penile stimulation required to achieve ejaculation.
The important influence of biological and social changes experienced by women and men in middle adulthood is reflected in the fact that depression is highest at age 48.5 around the world.
[145] Physically, older people experience a decline in muscular strength, reaction time, stamina, hearing, distance perception, and the sense of smell.
