CTET: Understanding Children with social need

CTET: Understanding Children with social need

Understanding Children with social need for Teacher Eligibility Test

Developmental Psychology

INTRODUCTION

Developmental Psychology, study of changes in human behavior and thought from infancy to old age. Developmental psychology is the study of how people change over time, but it also investigates how and why certain characteristics remain consistent over the life course. A child changes dramatically in size, physical coordination, and thinking capacity while maturing into an adult, for example, but may also maintain the same basic temperament while growing up.

Traditionally, developmental psychologists have focused on child development, believing that most formative experiences of life occur during infancy and childhood. The early years are indeed a time of extremely rapid development, when children acquire motor skills, thinking abilities, social skills, capacities for feeling and regulating emotion, and other characteristics that will last a lifetime. But psychologists have more recently turned their attention to adolescence and adulthood, recognizing that development continues throughout the life span. The study of adult development focuses on the unique experiences of this stage of life and examines how adults maintain and refine their capabilities as they age.

In studying development, researchers seek answers to many basic questions: In what ways do early experiences influence later growth? To what extent does heredity influence individual characteristics? What roles do the family, community, and culture play in a person’s development? How does the developing mind actively create understanding from everyday experiences? How do children acquire language? How does change in one area, such as physical growth, influence other aspects of development, such as social growth? What forms of parental discipline are effective in helping children’s moral growth? Answers to these and other questions can offer important practical guidance to those who care for children. For all individuals, understanding how we have become the people we are today contributes to greater self-awareness and greater appreciation of the forces that shape all people.

The study of human development requires an especially broad and integrative approach. Thus, developmental psychology incorporates ideas from almost every other area of psychology, including social psychology, cognitive psychology, biopsychology, clinical psychology, and educational psychology. It also draws from many other fields concerned with human behavior. These include sociology, biology (especially genetics and evolutionary biology), anthropology, and economics. The variety of fields relevant to developmental psychology reflects the complexity of human growth and change