Development means change,
and psychologist the study of people, so
developmental psychology is the study of
how people change.
Lifespan development is the subset
of psychology that tries to understand how
people change over time.
People come fully assembled at birth but
not fully operational.
We're not prepackaged is a completely formed being.
It takes a couple of months for our
color vision systems to stabilize.
It takes even longer to gain an
understanding of the world around us
and our place within that context.
We think of development is acquiring
skills and abilities but it isn't
limited to positive change.
Bones can break, muscles weaken and
diseases spread.
As we age, our eyes get worse, our
gait is less stable
and our internal temperature systems
become less responsive.
We develop osteoporosis, heart disease and Alzheimer's.
And development can be rapid or slow.
Your hair grows about half a millimeter
day.
You change taste buds every couple weeks.
And about once a month,
you get new skin cells to replace some of the old ones.
You are composed of multiple systems,
and each is on its own developmental
schedule.
Changes across the lifespan is so
abundant and complex, researchers usually
restrict their study to a particular topic
or to a particular period of time.
Topical researchers select a specific
process or faculty.
They may follow the rise, maintenance and fall of cognition across the lifespan
but they stay with a single topic.
They may track the entire lifespan of
language perception
or reproductive processes.
They might focus on something as specific
as fine gross motor skills
or something as broad
as a sense of self.
The other way to conserve energy is to
specialize in a specific period of time.
Studying children is still popular
but with people living longer more attention is being given to maintaining the health of
the elderly.
Advances in brain imagery have
increased the studying of the rapid
brain growth period.
Although researchers often focus on a
particular topic or age group,
developmental psychology has become very interdisciplinary.
It relies on genetics, chemistry, biology,
learning, neurology
and mathematical modeling.
Combining information from multiple
sciences
helps provide a more coherent explanation for developmental change.
Like alll sciences, developmental psychology has a strong preference for controlled
experiments,
so studies are conducted laboratory
settings.
These use random assignment to treatment conditions, clear operational definitions
and control groups.
The developmental psychology is
interdisciplinary approach
also allows it to embrace a wider range
of research methodologies.
It would be unethical to randomly
assign children to parents or social
economic levels,
so it is not uncommon to use
correlational studies, surveys,
ethnographies and
naturalistic observations.
Humans are complex beings,
so it's not surprising that we must be
seen within our biological, environmental
and social contexts.
These contexts
impact our decisions and change our
personal experiences,
and in return,
our environment is impacted by our choices of behaviors.
To understand developmental psychology
better,
I am trying to create a fictional character
we can trace over his lifespan.
If you'd like to help decide what
challenges our fictional friend
should face,
come to DevelopmentalDave.com and
give your input.
It's still under construction, but
probably always will be, so come on ahead.
