The Importance Of Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology is to study a wide range of theoretical areas, such as biological, social, emotion, and cognitive processes, the study of developmental psychology begins with a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a testable statement that reflects what the researcher expects to find in a study. The goal of research is to analyze the area of interest, collect information and data about topic, draw conclusions based upon this research and data, and then add or expand upon previously existing theories of development. Infancy is the period between birth and the acquisition of language one to two years later. Besides a set of inherited reflexes that help them obtain nourishment and react to danger, newborns are equipped with a predilection for

Children begin to comprehend words some months before they themselves actually speak. The average infant speaks his first words by 12 to 14 months, and by the 18th month he has a speaking vocabulary words. Children develop in the direction of greater awareness of their own emotional states, characteristics, and potential for action and they become increasingly able to discern and interpret the emotions of other people as well. This contributes to empathy, or the ability to appreciate the feelings and perceptions of others and understand their point of view. Adulthood is a period of optimum mental functioning, when the individual’s intellectual, emotional, and social capabilities are at their peak to meet the demands of career, marriage, and children. Some psychologists delineate various periods and transitions in early to middle adulthood that involve crises or reassessments of one’s life and result in decisions regarding new commitments or goals. During the mid 30’s people develop a sense of time limitation, and previous behavior patterns or beliefs may be given up in favor of new

Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mind and mental function, including learning, memory, attention, perception, reasoning, language, conceptual development, and decision making. The modern study of cognition rests on the premise that the brain can be understood as a complex computing system. The cognitive approach began to revolutionize psychology in the 1950’s to the 1960’s. It became the dominant approach in psychology by the by 1970. Interest in mental processes had been gradually restored through the work of Piaget and Tolman. It was the arrival of the computer that gave cognitive psychology the terminology and metaphor it needed to investigate the human mind. The start of the use of computers allowed psychologists to try to understand the complexities of human cognition by comparing it with something simpler and better understood a artificial system such as a computer. The use of the computer as a tool for thinking how the human mind handles information is known as the computer analogy. Then computers codes information, stores information, uses information, and produces an