Child Psychology

Child psychology is a specialized branch of psychology that develops and applies scientific knowledge to the delivery of psychological services to infants, toddlers, children, and adolescents within their social context. It is an understanding of the basic psychological needs of children and adolescents, and how the family and other social contexts influence the socio-emotional adjustment, cognitive development, and behavioral adaptation and health status of children and adolescents.

Developmental psychology denotes to the psychological ways in which human beings progress from birth to adulthood. For the purposefulness of this paper, the focal point will be on childhood developmental psychology. The subject perceived will be my five-year-old nephew Richard Tafoya. Furthermore, the interactive methods utilized throughout my observations will include: games, test of conservations, interviews, and cognitive assessments. This paper will indicate which physical actions were observed, verbal statements given, and what activity the child was doing in relation to one or more of the various theories of development.

For ease of review in discussing the developmental theorists and their theories of human development I have subdivided each theorist into their respective schools of psychology. These schools include the psychoanalytic school, behavioral school, humanistic school, cognitive school, and the individual schools of psychology. Each developmental theorist holds their own unique ideas and theories about various components of human development. I will be discussing the contributions of each of these theorists.

Development refers to a series of age-related changes that occur over an individual’s life course. Several famous psychologists such as Erik Erikson, Sigmund Freud, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Jean Piaget describe development of an individual as a series of phases or stages. In this case, a stage refers to a period in development in which individuals exhibit typical patterns in behavior and establish certain capabilities. The various stages of development as outlined in various developmental theories and concepts that would be analyzed in the paper share three main assumptions. The firs assumption that individuals go through stages in a given order, with each phase

*** Children cannot feel loveable if the targeted person/parent is seen to have surrendered her/him and does not love her/him. The unavoidable result is that they "will look for love in all the wrong places throughout their lives.

The study of Developmental psychology is how thought and behavior change and remain stable across the life span. This perspective

Many psychologists have persevering hope that several inherent issues will be resolved. Today, environment versus genetics has complicated developmental psychology for thousands of years, when the idea was debated by the philosopher Plato (Cherry 2015). Theorists such as Descartes argue that children are born with the cognitions they are meant to have, while later scientists such as John Locke insist that children are shaped by external forces after their birth (Cherry 2015). Regardless of this discrepancy, scientists seem to agree that the two coincide in most respects. For example, a child living in poverty may be depressed for this reason, but this also may be a disorder inherited from their parents or a temporary hormonal imbalance as a precursor to puberty. In addition, newer contributions have raised questions in regards to the checkpoints children should have met at certain ages. According to the Childhood Development Institute, a child between the ages of seven and nine months should be able to crawl, sit upright, and control the movements of their appendages (2015). A child that is unable to do these by the age of one is considered abnormal, but they may ultimately turn out to be a functioning, healthy person. Overall, these expectations are an average of abilities most children have at this age (The Institute of Childhood Development, 2015). However, revision may be necessary to adequately

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) in his early years of age was a biologist who originally studied molluscs but later he moved into the study of the development of children 's understanding, through observing them and talking and listening to them while they worked on exercises he set. He started his tests with his own children on describing the mechanism by which the mind processes new information. His views of how children’s minds work and develop have been enormously influential for parents, scientists, philosophers, and most particularly influence the educational theory (Siegler, 2005).

I am a freshman at Walla Walla University, with a psychology major, planning to go into child psychology. For the past two years, I have tutored students from grades K-6th grade at the elementary school in Texas. I would tutor in mostly math, but I have done other subjects as well. I have worked with children from all ages, and I have worked with children with disabilities. My goal here is to help as much as I can, and I plan to be completely devoted to my

Child Psychology is a very interesting career, and has been to people for a long time. This career allows people to help people with anything they need, including interacting with other kids.

He produced great work which has significantly brought new styles and approached the field of psychology. The development of psychology might have been confined in a set framework if the views of Jean Piaget and his approach to development did not make a marginal place in the 19th century. His worked focused on the adaptation of the biological adaptation in the psychology of the human and its analysis. He depicted himself as a genetic epistemologist, someone who makes constant struggle and endeavors to map out the origin of the nurturance in the adults from the actions of the sensory motion in infancy to operations of logical and formal cognition, which is focused on studying how knowledge development takes place in ontogenesis. The development stage theory provided by him is predominantly a cognitive domain named as on causal, logical beliefs and thinking (Kallio, 2015).

Developmental psychology is an intriguing topic, a fundamental revolution on the view of children. What is developmental psychology? It is a scientific approach that explains how humans change over time, from childhood to adulthood. Childhood is the time of life during which vast changes occur, a vulnerable newborn seems different to an active 2-year-old. Before the early 1960s, the study of human development was determined by either accounts of the behavioural or psychological facts. Scientists studying development engrossed mainly on human beings (Emmerich, 1968) and they focused on the primitive years of life or, they would focus on the years surrounding adolescence. These periods were considered to be the sections of ontogeny where the

Jean Piaget was a cognitive theorist who was born in Switzerland in the late 1800’s. He began his life with a concentration in the natural sciences, particularly the subject of mollusks, and later developed an interest in cognitive theory (“Jean Piaget Biography,” n.d.). His subsequent research and findings greatly influenced the field of developmental psychology, particularly childhood cognitive development theory. According to Saul McLeod, an instructor at the University of Manchester, prior to Piaget’s work “the common assumption in psychology was that children are merely less competent thinkers than adults. Piaget showed that young children think in strikingly different ways compared to adults” (McLeod, 2009). Instead, Piaget suggested

Jean Piaget studied processes, and how children change with age. Piaget’s ideas are what serve as our guide to cognitive theory because of his extensive studies, and thoroughness of his work. He became the foremost expert on development of knowledge from birth to adulthood. He studied children, and became fascinated with children’s incorrect responses. Focusing on the children’s wrong answers, he noticed that the children gave similar kinds of wrong answers at certain ages. Because of this, Piaget launched a lifelong study of intelligence, and he believed that children think in fundamentally different ways from adults. Piaget’s theory relies on both maturational and environmental factors. Piaget also believed that all species inherit

Child psychology, also called child development, is the study of the psychological processes of children and especially, how they develop as young adults and how they differ from one child to the next. It basically tend to map onto children’s physical, cognitive and social/emotional development. Psychologists attempt to make sense of every aspect of child development, including how children learn, think, interact and respond emotionally to people around them and understand emotions and their developing personalities, temperaments and skills. It also includes how individual, social and cultural factors may influence their development. Child study is of comparatively recent origin. Notable psychologists namely Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein and