These days, much is made of continuous learning. Workers are encouraged to take courses and mental health advocates aver that learning something new is a way to keep a balanced mind. The medical community has published more than one article about continuous learning helping to stave off dementia.
Developmental psychologists are united behind these ideas. Initially, this particular type of psychology concerned itself with studying how infants and children develop. That's logical because babies and pre-adolescents exhibit the greatest developmental strides. But it's also wrong because people don't stop developing. Not in adolescence, not in adulthood and not even in old age.
In all, developmental psychology is rather perplexing. It strives to answer difficult questions regarding individual stages of development. Especially as they contrast with systems that constantly change, as society is known to do. So let's study more about this most intriguing type of psychology. This article examines how it got its start and how it grew into the wide-ranging discipline it is today. We'll also explore a few developmental psychology theories.
The Early Days of Developmental Psychology
Social psychology is an area of psychological study that got its start in the early 1900s, one of the very first to be formally established. But philosophers have been studying developmental psychology for centuries. Only they didn't call it that, perhaps because no language yet included 'psychology'. Early studies of developmental psychology predate even Charles Darwin's evolutionary findings. True, Darwin studied physical development in animals but you'll see the connection in a bit.
Geneva-born French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a powerful figure during the Age of Enlightenment. He mused about many topics from the metaphysical to the merely weighty, such as politics and economy. He spent a great deal of his time pondering about people and human development, including child development, education and language acquisition. That could be because he felt compelled to give all of his children up.
"I trembled at the thought of entrusting them to a family ill brought up, to be still worse educated. The risk of the education of the foundling hospital was much less." Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions.
How odd that one individual who baulked at rearing and educating his children would become renowned for his theories on child-rearing and school education! His critics, including Voltaire, made ample use of that irony. But Rousseau's theories became the foundation of modern developmental psychology.
Well, his ideas and John B. Watson's, and American psychologist. You might note by his title that he made his contributions after the father of modern psychology formally established the discipline. And even long after the practice of organisational psychology was established. But where do Darwin's theories fit in?
As word got around about the English naturalist's journal on evolution, psychologists reasoned that they must discover a similar language to describe the changes the human mind undergoes. If such language didn't exist, they would establish a suitable class of nouns and phrases. American psychologist G. Stanley Hall set himself to the task. It's strange that he attempted to match stages of childhood development with various branches of the hominid tree, though.
Stages of Psychological Development
That may have been a step in the wrong direction but efforts persisted to classify human psychological development into stages. Obviously, that took some time because some aspects of development weren't even considered in this discipline's early days. For instance, today, we know that prenatal development is just as vital as any other stage of childhood development. Perhaps more so because it sets the stage for the nature v nurture debate.
From the developmental and cognitive psychology perspectives, infancy spans from birth to one year of age. During the course of that year, babies undergo many changes, including developing language skills. It is a time of exponential psychological growth, with nurturing aspects taking on more weight. For instance, if a caregiver encourages their child's explorations, the toddler is more likely to become confident. However, any stifling or limiting of a child's attempts to test their boundaries could cause them to become self-doubting and fearful.
Childhood has a significant reach - from the end of toddlerhood to the end of the tween years. By this time, children have undergone several stages of development. Depending on their environment and the guidance they received, they have learned to either trust or distrust. They will have established autonomy or be mired in shame and self-doubt. By the time they reach the play stage (3-5 years old), they will either be initiative takers or be riddled with guilt.
This was the fertile ground that psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud interpreted as the root of all psychosis. He seldom considered the middle childhood stage of development, which lasts from ages 6 to 12. This is a time when children test their mettle. Including in school, among their peers and away from caregivers. At this stage, nature takes the lead in shaping children's psychology.
Adolescence is when the united psychological developments coalesce into a social identity. Egocentric thought, so prevalent in toddlerhood, makes a comeback, albeit with a more mature bent. Adolescents seek to define themselves and figure out who they want to be. They back away from the group identity they might have assumed in school so they can focus on honing their self-image.
The need to be apart from a group disappears in early adulthood, the next stage of development. At this point, the focus is on relationships and how to maintain them. How well an individual develops intimacy skills depends on all previous stages of growth, as does counselling oneself on new adult experiences. Those include everything from managing finances to tasks grounded in organisational psychology.
Historically, research into psychological development ended at the adolescent stage, if not before. However, it didn't take terribly long for developmental psychologists to theorise that development continues through adulthood. Adults must learn how to conform to social norms without giving in to social pressures. They marry and become parents. They find and sometimes lose success. And they perpetually struggle to find their place in society.
If you think middle adulthood development is painful, old age development may be downright terrifying. Senior citizens must learn to accept their diminished social value. They don't stand a good chance of finding satisfying work. If they don't already have a partner, they're unlikely to find one. And they have to put their lives in proper perspective while trying to envision their demise. All that while feeling increasingly poorly and finding their options for engaging with society ever more limited.
Developmental Psychology Theories
Of all the developmental psychology theories, nature vs nurture has to be the most renowned. The 'nature' aspect posits that some behaviours are innate to the person, regardless of age. By contrast, 'nurture' states that some behaviours are learned in response to environmental stimuli. Those environmental questions range from maternal stress during pregnancy to the elderly adapting to their newly-limited circumstances. Thus, it makes sense that developmental psychology studies should cover the whole of human life, from birth to death.
Revered developmental psychologist Jean Piaget averred that cognitive development belonged to childhood stages of development. That's why most developmental psychology theories revolve around childhood development. Attachment theory is a great case in point. It proposes four types of attachment: secure, anxious-avoidant, anxious-resistant and disorganised. Each attachment type depends on other areas of cognitive and emotional development.
Many others, with Lev Vygotsky in the lead, maintained that cognitive and emotional development continue throughout human life. One does not simply stop developing at a given age. This theory has helped forensic psychologists focus their research on all stages of development, not just early childhood. From Dr Vygotsky's work, Uri Brofenbrenner developed the ecological systems theory.
It states that four systems provide the backdrop for human development. The microsystem is the immediate sphere of developmental influence. It consists of home, family, school, church and so on. The mesosystem includes how all of those factors intertwine and relate to one another. The exosystem brings the wider world into play. The macrosystem adds external influences such as culture and one's attitudes and ideologies.
Sigmund Freud is arguably the most renowned psychotherapist. He developed the theory of psychosexual development, which revolves around the theory that humans constantly seek pleasure. At the oral stage, infants find pleasure in suckling and other oral behaviours. The theory progresses through four more stages that roughly correspond with the pre-established stages of development. The anal stage concurs with toddlerhood, the phallic stage with the play stage, and so on.
Today, most developmental psychologists consider Freud's theories completely off the mark. Except for the rough alignment of Piaget's developmental stages, his ideas do not comport with other developmental psychology theories. Particularly not with the Theory of Mind, which discusses how individuals realise others have independent thoughts and feelings. It asserts that children must develop theory of mind within the critical early childhood development window, which ranges from birth to five years old.
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