Childhood Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology is the study of how human beings age and transform throughout the eight major stages of life. This paper will focus on the physical, cognitive, social, moral, and personality development of individuals found in stage two, (early childhood 1-6 year olds). Through exploring, and examining the countless influences that affect their growth development.

His theory states that a child’s development occurs within four stages, in which the individual possess a different way of thinking and understanding the world (Santrock, 2011). As Ruby is 3 years old, she is currently in the pre-operational stage of Piaget’s theory. During this stage, children’s thinking is unsystematic and illogical (Crain, 2005). When Ruby was offered either one, big chocolate fish or five, tiny chocolate fish, she opted for the five, smaller ones. This instance occurred again, when given the option of a short, fat glass of juice or a tall, thin glass, she selected the taller glass. This supports Piaget theory as it illustrates that Ruby is unable to converse. Crain, 2005, reinforces this idea stating that an inability to converse demonstrates that the child only focuses on one dimension, the height or width of the glass, and is stuck in this idea that objects are

At the age of 4-7 the child reaches the, ?Intuitive?, stage, at this stage the child has some concept of differences i.e. the child can distinguish between the size and colour of different coloured bricks. However the child is still what Piaget called, ?Egocentric?, unable to see things from another?s point of view.

Little Children (2006) is a film that explores couples (Sarah and Richard) and (Brad and Kathy) and how unhappy they are in their marriages. Sarah and Brad start to develop a romantic relationship, which then frightens the other mothers in the park. Then, Ronnie, sex offender, and Shelia, a woman Ronnie’s mother, wanted him to see, go on a date. It went downhill once Ronnie asks Shelia to drive by an elementary school to masturbate.

The film Precious is an emotional movie that deals with the unfortunate realities of everyday life for some individuals. The film that stares Gabourey Sidibe who plays the main character Clarice “Precious” Jones is based out of Harlem in the year of 1987. Precious is a sixteen year-old obese and uneducated teenager whom has had to grow up in a severely dysfunctional family environment. Her mother verbally and physically abuses her, often times using her as a personal servant. Her father has been sexually abusing her since childhood, and has impregnated her twice. Precious has lived with the ugly truth that because of her weight, skin color, and sexual abuse, she does not fit in

Psychology is diverse, and there are many diverse specialty areas available to individuals seeking a career in the field of psychology. Most Psychologists choose to specialize in subfields that focus on specific subjects. Obtaining a profession in any of the specialty areas would require graduate study in that area of interest. Some professionals have a broad general knowledge, are skilled in several areas, and work with a range of clients. Some are specialist in treating a specific type of psychological disorder, or work with a specific age group. For those interested in specializing in a psychology career, developmental Psychology is one of the many fields available.

1. According to Robert Sternberg, love goes through 3 stages of love he calls “The three dimension of love; passion, intimacy, and commitment. Sternberg believes when you go through the three dimension of love, there are also seven different type of love. The seven different type of love is liking, infatuation, empty love, romantic love, fatuous love, companionate love, and consummate love. The first dimension of love is passion; it is the process where we first start falling in love with a partner. Passion is what I call the “getting to know each other” stage of a relationship. The second part of the three dimension of love is intimacy. Intimacy is when you feel close to a person whether it’s emotionally or physically. It is also a stage where you share your deepest secret about you to the person who you feel that you’re in love with. Intimacy is where you feel the closest in your relationship. The third and final stage of the three dimension of love is commitment. Commitment is the phase where people decide that being with that one person is enough and they would spend the rest of their life being together that leads to marriage and children. I feel that Sternberg’s dimension of love is associated to Erikson’s intimacy vs. isolation. “Adults seek someone with whom to share their lives in an enduring and self-sacrificing commitment. Without such commitment, they risk profound aloneness and isolation.” (Berger, p.525) I believe

The cognitive developmental theory comes from the work and research done by Jean Piaget which we believe is an empiricist approach which goes hand and hand with Piaget’s constructive approach. Empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. The constructive approach is viewed as children discovering all knowledge about the world through their own learning and knowledge. According to Piaget, children pass through these stages at different times in their lives and cannot skip a stage which causes them to be seen as invariant.

Piaget believe that children are active thinkers. He recognized that the mind develops through a series of irreversible stages. He also acknowledged that a child’s maturing brain builds schemas that are constantly assimilating and accommodating to the world around them. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is split into four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The sensorimotor stage occurs from birth to nearly two years of age. At this stage, infants learn about the world around them by sensing it and interacting within it. It is also in this stage that the idea of object permanence develops, that is, the awareness that things continue to exist even when they are not being observed. In my personal life, I am certain that in this stage of development I would have enjoyed peek-a-boo, because if I didn’t see it, to my developing mind, it wasn’t there at all. The second stage, preoperational, lasts from two years of age to seven years of

Annotated Bibliography PHILP, M. (2004). Psychology: Overcoming the pain of shyness. The Globe and Mail (1936-Current), F6. "How to Become a Child Psychologist." Careersinpsychology.org.

Developmental psychology is the scientific study of changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life. Initially focused on infants and children, the life stages of developmental psychology is ranged to include infancy, adolescence, adult development, and the entire lifespan. This field looks at change across a wide range of topics that includes motor skills and other psychological processes such as cognitive development involving areas like problem solving, moral understanding, conceptual understanding, language acquisition, social personality, emotional development, and self-concept and identity formation.

At the preoperational stage children think in strikingly differently ways compared to adults. They look at the world only from their own point of view-Egocentrism! A related limitation is centration. They only experience physical objects when the object is visually present. In Piaget’s theory, pre-operational children lack the ability to reflect on operations. They focus on one dimension of objects or events and on static states rather than transformations. Similarly, such children are unable to comprehend points of view different from their own, and Piaget devised an experiment to explore this.

In this booklet we are going to be looking a how children develop and to learn the variety of patterns in which they learn them. Each stage a child passes through are broadly the same, although all children develop differently. If you work with children or children are in your life in the same age group you may become to recognise the similarities in the levels of development. The patterns of children's development will fall into a variety of areas , although many of these may interlink with one another.

Developmental psychopathology is measured by three guidelines: statistical deviance, maladaptiveness, and personal distress. Statistical deviance defines a range of normal and abnormal behavior, maladaptiveness determines if a person is a danger to themselves or others, and personal distress characterizing personal suffering (Sigelman & Rider, 2012).

Developmental Psychology has widened my perspective and knowledge of the nature of development from humans’ infancy to adolescence and emerging adulthood. Although I have learned about biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes and periods of development, I am especially interested in socioemotional development in infancy because it is the foundation for a child’s future development. That is to say, if children have a healthy socioemotional development from infancy, they will have a healthy life later on. By understanding the developmental process in infancy, I will be fully prepared when I have children or when my family’s members do.