Developmental psychology is the scientific study of age related behavioral changes which occur as a child grows up. This field examines change across a broad range of topics including: motor skills, problem solving abilities, conceptual understanding, acquisition of language, moral understanding, and identity formation. A motor skill is a skill required for proper usage of skeletal muscles. ... Problem solving forms part of thinking. ... Morality is a complex system of general principles and particular judgments based on cultural, religious, and philosophical concepts and beliefs, by which an individual determines whether his or her actions are right or wrong. ... The notion of identity has many uses throughout the social sciences. ...

Questions addressed by developmental psychologists include the following: Are children qualitatively different from adults or do they simply lack the experience that adults draw upon? Does development occur through the gradual accumulation of knowledge or through shifts from one stage of thinking to another? Are children born with innate knowledge or do they figure things out through experience? Is development driven by the social context or by something inside each child?

Many theoretical perspectives attempt to explain development, among the most prominent are: Jean Piaget's Stage Theory, Lev Vygotsky's Social Contextualism, and the information processing framework. Historical theories continue to provide a basis for additional research, among them are Erik Erikson’s life-span stage theory, John Watson’s and B. F. Skinner’s Behaviorism, and a set of nested levels of context proposed by Urie Bronfenbrenner. Many other theories are prominent for their contributions to particular aspects of development. For example, Attachment theory describes kinds of interpersonal relationships and Lawrence Kohlberg describes stages in moral reasoning. Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 – September 16, 1980) was a Swiss developmental psychologist. ... Developed first by Jean Piaget, the theory of cognitive development is based on schemas, or schemes of how one perceives the world, in critical periods -- times during which one is particularly susceptible to certain information. ... Lev Vygotsky Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (November 17 (November 5 (O.S.)), 1896—June 11, 1934) was a Russian developmental psychologist, discovered by the Western world in the 1960s. ... In general, information processing is the changing (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an observer. ... Erik Homburger Erikson (June 15, 1902 - May 12, 1994) was a developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings, and for coining the phrase identity crisis. Biography Eriksons heritage is somewhat mysterious. ... John Watson is a common name. ... Burrhus Frederic Skinner Burrhus Frederic Skinner ( March 20, 1904 - August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist and author. ... Behaviorism (or behaviourism) is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior is interesting and worthy of scientific research. ... Attachment theory is a theory (or group of theories) about the psychological concept of attachment: the tendency to seek closeness to another person and feel secure when that person is present. ... Lawrence Kohlberg (October 25, 1927 - April 15, 1987) was a psychologist who was born in Bronxville, New York. ... Kohlbergs stages of moral development were developed by Lawrence Kohlberg to explain the development of moral reasoning. ...

Developmental psychology informs several applied fields, including: educational/school psychology, child psychopathology, and developmental forensics. Developmental psychology complements several other basic research fields in psychology including social psychology, cognitive psychology, and comparative psychology. Educational psychology or school psychology is the psychological science studying how children and adults learn, the effectiveness of various educational strategies and tactics, and how schools function as organizations. ... Psychology (ancient Greek: psyche = soul and logos = word) is the study of behaviour, mind and thought. ... Social psychology is the study of the nature and causes of human social behavior. ... Cognitive psychology is the psychological science which studies cognition, the mental processes that are hypothesised to underlie behavior. ... Comparative psychology, taken in its most usual, broad, sense, refers in to the study of the behaviour and mental life of animals other than human beings. ...

See also

• Annotated Bibliography : a list of prominent works in developmental psychology

Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy Principles of Psychology William James Principles of Psychology, 1890. ...

Additional Resources

• Developmental Psychology (http://www.devpsy.org): lessons for teaching and learning developmental psychology
• GMU’s On-Line Resources for Developmental Psychology (http://classweb.gmu.edu/awinsler/ordp/topic.html): a web directory of Developmental Psychology organizations