Developmental psychology

Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why human beings change over the course of their life. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire lifespan. Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking, feeling, and behaviors change throughout life. This field examines change across three major dimensions: physical development, cognitive development, and socioemotional development. 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. Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why human beings change over the course of their life. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire lifespan. Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking, feeling, and behaviors change throughout life. This field examines change across three major dimensions: physical development, cognitive development, and socioemotional development. 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. Developmental psychology examines the influences of nature and nurture on the process of human development, and processes of change in context and across time. 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. Ongoing debates include biological essentialism vs. neuroplasticity and stages of development vs. dynamic systems of development. Developmental psychology involves a range of fields, such as educational psychology, child psychopathology, forensic developmental psychology, child development, cognitive psychology, ecological psychology, and cultural psychology. Influential developmental psychologists from the 20th century include Urie Bronfenbrenner, Erik Erikson, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Barbara Rogoff, Esther Thelen, and Lev Vygotsky. John B. Watson and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are typically cited as providing the foundations for modern developmental psychology. In the mid-18th century Jean Jacques Rousseau described three stages of development: infants (infancy), puer (childhood) and adolescence in Emile: Or, On Education. Rousseau's ideas were taken up strongly by educators at the time. It generally focuses on how and why certain modifications throughout an individual’s life-cycle (cognitive, social, intellectual, personality) and human growth change over time. There are many theorists that have made a profound contribution to this area of psychology. For example, Erik Erikson developed a model of eight stages of psychological development. He believed that humans developed in stages throughout their lifetimes and this would affect their behaviors (Similar ideas to Sigmund Freud) In the late 19th century, psychologists familiar with the evolutionary theory of Darwin began seeking an evolutionary description of psychological development; prominent here was the pioneering psychologist G. Stanley Hall, who attempted to correlate ages of childhood with previous ages of humanity. 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. James Mark Baldwin was heavily involved in the theory of developmental psychology. Sigmund Freud, whose concepts were developmental, significantly affected public perceptions. Sigmund Freud believed that we all had a conscious, preconscious, and unconscious level. In the conscious, we are aware of our mental process. The preconscious involves information that, though not currently in our thoughts, can be brought into consciousness. Lastly, the unconscious includes mental processes we are unaware of. He believed there is tension between the conscious and unconscious because the conscious tries to hold back what the unconscious tries to express. To explain this he developed three personality structures: the id, ego, and superego. The id, the most primitive of the three, functions according to the pleasure principle: seek pleasure and avoid pain. The superego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the superego. Based on this, he proposed five universal stages of development, that each is characterized by the erogenous zone that is the source of the child's psychosexual energy. The first is the oral stage, which occurs from birth to 12 months of age. During the oral stage, 'the libido is centered in a baby's mouth.' The baby is able to suck. The second is the anal stage, from one to three years of age. During the anal stage, the child defecates from the anus and is often fascinated with their defecation. The third is the phallic stage, which occurs from three to five years of age (most of a person's personality forms by this age). During the phallic stage, the child is aware of their sexual organs. The fourth is the latency stage, which occurs from age five until puberty. During the latency stage, the child's sexual interests are repressed. Stage five is the genital stage, which takes place from puberty until adulthood. During the genital stage, puberty starts happening.