User:Bmallery99/Developmental psychology

Research areas
 Neural Development 

'''One critical aspect of developmental psychology is the study of neural development, which investigates how the brain changes and develops during different stages of life. Neural development focuses on how the brain changes and develops during different stages of life. Studies have shown that the human brain undergoes rapid changes during prenatal and early postnatal periods. These changes include the formation of neurons, the development of neural networks, and the establishment of synaptic connections. The formation of neurons and the establishment of basic neural circuits in the developing brain are crucial for laying the foundation of the brain's structure and function, and disruptions during this period can have long-term effects on cognitive and emotional development. '''

'''Experiences and environmental factors play a crucial role in shaping neural development. For instance, early sensory experiences, such as exposure to language and visual stimuli, can influence the development of neural pathways related to perception and language processing. '''

'''Furthermore, research has also highlighted the role of genetic factors in neural development. Genetic factors can influence the timing and pattern of neural development, as well as the susceptibility to certain developmental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. '''

'''Research finds that the adolescent brain undergoes significant changes in neural connectivity and plasticity. During this period, there is a pruning process where certain neural connections are strengthened while others are eliminated, resulting in more efficient neural networks and increased cognitive abilities, such as decision-making and impulse control. '''

'''The study of neural development provides crucial insights into the complex interplay between genetics, environment, and experiences in shaping the developing brain. By understanding the neural processes underlying developmental changes, researchers gain a better understanding of cognitive, emotional, and social development in humans.'''

Cognitive development
Cognitive development is primarily concerned with the ways that infants and children acquire, develop, and use internal mental capabilities such as: problem-solving, memory, and language. Major topics in cognitive development are the study of language acquisition and the development of perceptual and motor skills. Piaget was one of the influential early psychologists to study the development of cognitive abilities. His theory suggests that development proceeds through a set of stages from infancy to adulthood and that there is an end point or goal.

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. Rather, from this viewpoint, developmental processes proceed more continuously. Thus, development should be analyzed, instead of treated as a product to obtain.

K. Warner Schaie has expanded the study of cognitive development into adulthood. Rather than being stable from adolescence, Schaie sees adults as progressing in the application of their cognitive abilities.

Modern cognitive development has integrated the considerations of cognitive psychology and the psychology of individual differences into the interpretation and modeling of development. Specifically, the neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development showed that the successive levels or stages of cognitive development are associated with increasing processing efficiency and working memory capacity. These increases explain differences between stages, progression to higher stages, and individual differences of children who are the same-age and of the same grade-level. However, other theories have moved away from Piagetian stage theories, and are influenced by accounts of domain-specific information processing, which posit that development is guided by innate evolutionarily-specified and content-specific information processing mechanisms.

Social and emotional development
Developmental psychologists who are interested in social development examine how individuals develop social and emotional competencies. For example, they study how children form friendships, how they understand and deal with emotions, and how identity develops. Research in this area may involve study of the relationship between cognition or cognitive development and social behavior.

Emotional regulation or ER refers to an individual's ability to modulate emotional responses across a variety of contexts. In young children, this modulation is in part controlled externally, by parents and other authority figures. As children develop, they take on more and more responsibility for their internal state. Studies have shown that the development of ER is affected by the emotional regulation children observe in parents and caretakers, the emotional climate in the home, and the reaction of parents and caretakers to the child's emotions.

Music also has an influence on stimulating and enhancing the senses of a child through self-expression.

A child's social and emotional development can be disrupted by motor coordination problems, evidenced by the environmental stress hypothesis. The environmental hypothesis explains how children with coordination problems and developmental coordination disorder are exposed to several psychosocial consequences which act as secondary stressors, leading to an increase in internalizing symptoms such as depression and anxiety. Motor coordination problems affect fine and gross motor movement as well as perceptual-motor skills. Secondary stressors commonly identified include the tendency for children with poor motor skills to be less likely to participate in organized play with other children and more likely to feel socially isolated.

Social and emotional development focuses on five keys areas: Self-Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills and Responsible Decision Making.

Physical development
Physical development concerns the physical maturation of an individual's body until it reaches the adult stature. Although physical growth is a highly regular process, all children differ tremendously in the timing of their growth spurts. Studies are being done to analyze how the differences in these timings affect and are related to other variables of developmental psychology such as information processing speed. Traditional measures of physical maturity using x-rays are less in practice nowadays, compared to simple measurements of body parts such as height, weight, head circumference, and arm span.

A few other studies and practices with physical developmental psychology are the phonological abilities of mature 5- to 11-year-olds, and the controversial hypotheses of left-handers being maturationally delayed compared to right-handers. A study by Eaton, Chipperfield, Ritchot, and Kostiuk in 1996 found in three different samples that there was no difference between right- and left-handers.

Memory development
Researchers interested in memory development look at the way our memory develops from childhood and onward. According to fuzzy-trace theory, a theory of cognition originally proposed by Valerie F. Reyna and Charles Brainerd, people have two separate memory processes: verbatim and gist. These two traces begin to develop at different times as well as at a different pace. Children as young as four years old have verbatim memory, memory for surface information, which increases up to early adulthood, at which point it begins to decline. On the other hand, our capacity for gist memory, memory for semantic information, increases up to early adulthood, at which point it is consistent through old age. Furthermore, one's reliance on gist memory traces increases as one ages.

Main research methods
Developmental psychology employs many of the research methods used in other areas of psychology. However, infants and children cannot be tested in the same ways as adults, so different methods are often used to study their development.

Developmental psychologists have a number of methods to study changes in individuals over time. Common research methods include systematic observation, including naturalistic observation or structured observation; self-reports, which could be clinical interviews or structured interviews; clinical or case study method; and ethnography or participant observation. These methods differ in the extent of control researchers impose on study conditions, and how they construct ideas about which variables to study. Every developmental investigation can be characterized in terms of whether its underlying strategy involves the experimental, correlational, or case study approach. The experimental method involves "actual manipulation of various treatments, circumstances, or events to which the participant or subject is exposed; the experimental design points to cause-and-effect relationships. This method allows for strong inferences to be made of causal relationships between the manipulation of one or more independent variables and subsequent behavior, as measured by the dependent variable. The advantage of using this research method is that it permits determination of cause-and-effect relationships among variables. On the other hand, the limitation is that data obtained in an artificial environment may lack generalizability. The correlational method explores the relationship between two or more events by gathering information about these variables without researcher intervention. The advantage of using a correlational design is that it estimates the strength and direction of relationships among variables in the natural environment; however, the limitation is that it does not permit determination of cause-and-effect relationships among variables. 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. Each of these methods have its strengths and weaknesses but the experimental method when appropriate is the preferred method of developmental scientists because it provides a controlled situation and conclusions to be drawn about cause-and-effect relationships.