Developmental psychology

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- Preface
- Theoretical problems of development psychology
  - 1.1 The subject, objectives and methods of psychology
  - 1.2 Conception of age and psychological development stages
- The problem of the periodization of mental development in developmental psychology
  - 2 The problem of the periodization of mental development in developmental psychology
  - 2.1 Biogenetic concepts in foreign developmental psychology
  - 2.2 The theory of Jean Piaget’s mental development
  - 2.3.Epigenetic principle of development by E.Erikson
  - 2.4 Cultural-historical concept of mental development by Vygotsky
- Psychological aspects of ontogenetic development period
  - 3.1.Newborn crisis
  - 3.2 Infancy (2-12 months)
  - 3.3 Toddlerhood (1-3 year)
  - 3.4 Preschool age (3- 6-7 year)
  - 3.5 Early school age (7—10,11 years)
  - 3.6 Adolescence (10-11 — 15-16 years)
  - 3.7 Youth (17-18 – 26 years)
  - 3.8 Aduldhood
  - 3.9 Late aduldhood
- Practice
  - 1.1 The subject, objectives and methods of psychology
  - 2 The problem of the periodization of mental development in developmental psychology
  - 2.4 Cultural-historical concept of mental development by Vygotsky
  - 3.4 Preschool age (3- 6-7 year)
  - 3.6 Adolescence (10-11 — 15-16 years)

- Алғы сөз
- Даму психологиясының теориялық мәселелері
  - 1.1 Психологияның пәні, міндеттері мен әдістері
  - 1.2 Жастың психологиялық тұжырымдамасы және психикалық дамудың кезеңділігі туралы мәселе
- Даму психологиядағы психикалық дамудың кезеңділігі туралы мәселе
  - 2 Даму психологиядағы психикалық дамудың кезеңділігі туралы мәселе
  - 2.1 Шетелдік және отандық психологиядағы қозғаушы күштердің, ақыл-ой дамуының көздері мен жағдайлары туралы пікірлер
  - 2.2 Ж.Пиаженің психикалық даму теориясы
  - 2.3.3Э. Эриксонның жеке тұлғаны дамытудың эпигенетикалық теориясы
  - 2.4 Л.С. Выготскийдің психикалық дамуының мәдени-тарихи тұжырымдамасы
- Онтогенетикалық даму кезеңдерінің психологиялық сипаттамалары
  - 3.1.Сәби дағдарысы
  - 3.2 Нәресте (2-12 ай)
  - 3.3 Ерте жастағы (1-3 жас)
  - 3.4 Мектепке дейінгі жас (3- 6-7 жас)
  - 3.5 Кіші мектептік жас (7-10,11 жас)
  - 3.6 Жасөспірім жас (10,11-15,16 жас)
  - 3.7 Жастық жас (17,18 – 26 жас)
  - 3.8 Кемел жас
  - 3.9 Кәрілік
- Практика
  - 1.1 Психологияның пәні, міндеттері мен әдістері
  - 2 Даму психологиядағы психикалық дамудың кезеңділігі туралы мәселе
  - 2.4 Л.С. Выготскийдің психикалық дамуының мәдени-тарихи тұжырымдамасы
  - 3.4 Мектепке дейінгі жас (3- 6-7 жас)
  - 3.6 Жасөспірім жас (10,11-15,16 жас)

1.1 The subject, objectives and methods of psychology

Developmental psychology - branch of psychology devoted to identifying and explaining the continuities and changes that individuals display over time.

Humans change in many directions. We may show gains in some areas of development, while showing losses in other areas. Every change, whether it is finishing high school, getting married, or becoming a parent, entails both growth and loss.

We change across three general domains/dimensions; physical, cognitive, and psychosocial. The physical domain includes changes in height and weight, sensory capabilities, the nervous system, as well as the propensity for disease and illness. The cognitive domain encompasses the changes in intelligence, wisdom, perception, problem solving, memory, and language. The psychosocial domain focuses on changes in emotion, self perception and interpersonal relationships with families, peers, and friends. All three domains influence each other. It is also important to note that a change in one domain may cascade and prompt changes in the other domains. For instance, an infant who has started to crawl or walk will encounter more objects and people, thus fostering developmental change in the child’s understanding of the physical and social world.

Is human development best characterized as a slow, gradual process, or is it best viewed as one of more abrupt change? The answer to that question often depends on which developmental theorist you ask and what topic is being studied. The theories of Freud, Erikson, Piaget, and Kohlberg are called stage theories. Stage theories or discontinuous development assume that developmental change often occurs in distinct stages that are qualitatively different from each other, and in a set, universal sequence. At each stage of development, children and adults have different qualities and characteristics. Thus, stage theorists assume development is more discontinuous. Others, such as the behaviorists, Vygotsky, and information processing theorists, assume development is a more slow and gradual process known as continuous development. For instance, they would see the adult as not possessing new skills, but more advanced skills that were already present in some form in the child. Brain development and environmental experiences contribute to the acquisition of more developed skills.

At the end of ХІХ century developmental psychology became independent branch. Appeared as child psychology developmental psychology it was only focused on mental development of child and took a lot of time. Nevertheless society’s demands, achievements of psychology science, study each age consider from development side and also analyse interrelation of subjects helped to identify developmental psychology.

The field of human development is regarded as developmental psychology. The branches of developmental psychology are child development or child psychology, adolescent psychology and adulthood psychology. Child psychology focused on the developmental changes of children from conception to early adolescent. Child psychology is the centre of developmental psychology since behaviour develops rapidly in the childhood state. Adolescent psychology and adulthood psychology deal with developmental changes, characteristics and problems that occur especially in adolescence and adulthood periods.

Nowadays developmental psychology consists of following parts:

- child psychology (study mental development’s stages from new-born till teenage age);
- teenage psychology
- adult psychology
- gerontopsychology (ageing psychology)

The important principle of developmental psychology - historical principle, its child history, development stages and psychological content of ontogenesis.

The notion “childhood” was analyzed by P.P.Blonskiy, L.S.Vygotskiy, D.B.Elkonin at their works.

During a child's development from infancy to adulthood, many influences are responsible for shaping their ways of seeing the world, their ideas of their own identity and their place within society. Factors such as environmental setting, family, community and the media all shape a child. In a perfect world, a child would develop successfully into a happily functioning adult, without any problems along the way, however this is not usually the case and many children find that they may struggle throughout the process. According to L.S.Vygotsky the intellectual ability of child does not depend on law of nature.

The historical analysis of the notion “childhood” D.Felshtein’s conception describes as social-psychological phenomena of society and special condition of development according to modern developmental psychology.

D.Felshtein’s conception gives psychological analysis of functional relationship interaction which defines social aspect of childhood in particular society. Besides there was found ways to solve the question about the relation between different periods of childhood which shows general condition of childhood, that transfers to the next level adulthood.

By defining childhood as phenomena of social world, D.I.Feldshtein defines the following characteristics.

Functionally “childhood” is objective necessary condition in dynamic system of society, becoming mature and be ready to improve demography.

Its content defines it as the process of constant physical growth, mental formation, to know social environment, reflex, identify himself, self-organization in a contact with adults and other children (younger, peers, elder), and adult life in general.

Childhood presents social development when biological law connected with age changes of child.

The meaning of all these changes not only learn social norms (pays a lot of attention), but social peculiarities which intrinsic to human nature. In order to achieve necessary level of socialization which is typical for historical society, for particular historical time, but at the time it is the condition of development of that social level which characterises person of particular era, in this case modern person. Besides social aspect defines peculiarities of individual development of child.

Our social age is based on the social norms of our culture and the expectations our culture has for people of our age group. Our culture often reminds us whether we are “on target” or “off target” for reaching certain social milestones, such as completing our education, moving away from home, having children, or retiring from work. However, there have been arguments that social age is becoming less relevant in the 21st century .

Thus developmental psychology is a special branch of psychology and mental processes which involves growth and developmental changes in terms of differentiation, the maturation, and learning, integration of biological, cognitive and affective processes. It is also includes the study of processes that contribute to foundations of life in terms of fertilisation, zygote formation, embryonic development leading to the development of the neonate, the child, adolescent, adult and senescence (old age).

Methods of developmental psychology. Psychology is a science as well as an art. In this regard, it requires scientific methods of investigation using certain research tools. In this unit, you will be exposed to various methods of studying developmental psychology. You all know that developmental psychology is a branch of psychology which is the scientific study of human development and its changes and behavioural patterns.

Developmental psychology is an inter-disciplinary and multidisciplinary field, made of sociology, anthropology and biology. Human life is a process of continual development. The developmental changes in human life find expression in physical, intellectual, personality and social changes. The field of developmental psychology can benefit from developmental research as a result of prevention of problematic behaviour among the various stages of human development. In this section, seven prominent research methods employed in the study of human development are:

1. The observation method
2. The survey method
3. The case study method – The chemical care study development care study – longitudinal progression
4. The experimental method
5. The observation method

The observation method carries out observational studies which yields significant result on developmental characteristics of children. The observation method is classified into two namely, maturation observation method and participant observation method. In maturation observation the researcher observes the specific behavioural characteristics of children or adolescents or adults in natural setting. It enables the researcher to study individuals independently of their ability to report on themselves while it does not disturb or affect the events under investigation. The participant observation as a research enables the researcher to become part and parcel of the group which he wants to observe. In this case, he establishes rapport with the group of children or adolescents (even adults) in order that they may not become conscious of his presence so that they may not hide their actual behaviour or overt behaviour. The observation method may have a number of limitations such as the subjectivity of interpretation and collection of data from overt behavior which does not provide reliable information regarding internal mental process.

The survey method especially the social survey method employs interviews (structured / unstructured) and questionnaire for the determination of incidence and prevalence of given attitudes and behaviour with identifiable population. For instance, the researcher may be interested in studying the abnormality and prevalence of drug abuse among adolescents or to find out the prevalence of certain child-rearing or maltreatment of widowhood practices and so on.

The case study method is used in baby biographies and in clinical approaches involving maladaptive children and adults. The case study method is categorized into the clinical case study or case history and developmental case study. The clinical case study is designed to gather information and present condition of the subjects. In clinical case study information is specifically collected from the following sources: biodata, past history such as the state of mother during pregnancy, relation between children and parents of the family and so on; and present condition may derive information from physical, mental, and social -emotional of child’s development after birth. The developmental case study or genetic method uses two approaches to collect the data with longitudinal approach and cross-sectional approach. The longitudinal approach is employed by the researcher for studying human development in order to compare the same individuals at different intervals between birth and maturity or at any specific age bracket. The researcher observes their developmental characteristics regularly from year to year. This approach is used to study physical, mental, language, emotional and social developmental characteristics of children, It also allows researchers to plot individual growth curves in such areas as language, motor and cognitive development. The cross-sectional approach compares different groups of individual of varying age cohort to specific aspect of developmental stages.

The experimental method offers cause and effect relationships. It is a study in which the researcher manipulates one or more variables known as independent variables and measures other variables termed dependent variables (Mills, 1969). The independent variable is assigned to be the causal factor in the variables being studied while the dependent variable is usually some measure after subjects’ behaviour (Zanden, 1978). The experimental method uses a systematic procedure called experimental design. It provides guidelines to the researcher to carry out his research sequentially. The experimental design is made up of the experimental group and control group for the purpose of testing hypotheses. The control group is associated with the experimental group except that the researcher did not introduce change into it. The control group provides a mental standard against which the changes in the experimental group can be measured. For instance undergraduate class students talk noisily when the lecturer is out of the room but become quiet when the lecturer enters; the change in the level of lecture room noise is the dependent variable and its cause by the lecturer’s presence is the independent variables.