Dr.

SARATH P
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
 INTRODUCTION TO DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY
 BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF DEVELOPMENT
 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
 SOCIAL AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
 THE CONTEXT OF DEVELOPMENT
Developmental psychology
 Development is the sequence of age-related changes that
occur as a person progresses from conception to death
 Developmental psychology examines the influences of nature
and nurture on the process of human development, and
processes of change in context and across time.
 Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and
why human beings change over the course of their life.
 Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has
expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and
the entire lifespan.
 broad range of topics including: motor skills, cognitive
development, executive functions, moral understanding,
language, acquisition, social change, personality, emotional
development, selfconcept and identity formation
Developmental psychology and
child psychology
 Child psychology is one of the many branches of psychology.
 This particular branch focuses on the mind and behavior of
children from prenatal development through adolescence.
 Child psychology deals not only with how children grow
physically, but with their mental, emotional, and social
development as well.
 the study of the psychological processes of children and,
specifically, how these processes differ from those of adults, how
they develop from birth to the end of adolescence, and how and
why they differ from one child to the next. The topic is
sometimes grouped with infancy, adulthood, and aging under
the category of developmental psychology.
 The main aim of child psychology is to help us know how best to
raise and care for our children.
 What determines how a child develops? While it is impossible to
account for each and every Influence that contributes to who a
child eventually becomes, what researchers can do is look at
some of the most apparent factors.
 These include things such as genetics, parenting, experiences,
friends, family, education, and relationships. By understanding
the role that these factors play, researchers are better able to
identify how such influences contribute to development.
 While some aspects of development may be strongly influenced
by biology, environmental influences may also play a role.
RESEARCH STRATEGIES IN
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
 The data of child psychology are gathered from a variety of
sources. Observations by relatives, teachers, and other adults, as
well as the psychologist’s direct observation of and interviews
with a child (or children), provide much material
 Personality tests, intelligence tests, and experimental methods
have also proved useful in understanding child development.
RESEARCH STRATEGIES IN
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
 Scientific research is objective, systematic, and repeatable.
 It reduces the likelihood that information will be based on
personal beliefs, opinions, and feelings.
 Scientific research is based on the scientific method, an
approach that can be used to discover accurate information.
 It involves the processes of: conceptualizing the problem,
collecting requisite data, drawing conclusions, and revising
research conclusions and formulating a theory therefrom.
 Use various research methods-
longitudinal design and cross-
sectional design
 In a longitudinal design investigators observe one group of
participants repeatedly over a period of time. This approach to
the study of development is usually contrasted with the cross-
sectional approach
 In a cross-sectional design investigators compare groups of
participants of differing age at a single point in time. .
Main Role of Child Psychologists
 Child psychologists are professionals or specialists in their
subject who operate in a variety of settings. Some of these areas
include being a child counselor, an academic and social
programs advisor or even a researcher in the study of the branch.
 They have already studied many different possible issues such as
how a child learns, the impact of the environment on a child’s
behaviour and how behavioural problems manifest.
THEORIES OF HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT
 A scientific theory is nothing more than a set of
concepts and propositions that a scientist believes to
be true about a specific area of investigation
 Will be based on scientific researches
 Freud’s Psychoanalytic
Theory
 Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) was an
Austrian neurologist and the founder of
psychoanalysis,
 a clinical method for treating
psychopathology through dialogue
between a patient and a psychoanalyst
 Out of his growing clinical practice, Freud
gradually developed his theories of human
personality and mental illness.
 Freud believed that events in our
childhood have a profound influence on
our adult lives, shaping our personality.
 Psychosexual Stages of
Development
• Psychosexual Stages of Development:
• According to Freud, an innate sequence of stages
through which all human beings pass.
• Freud believed that personality developed through a
series of childhood stages in which the pleasure-
seeking energies of the id become focused on certain
erogenous areas.
• An erogenous zone is characterized as an area of the
body that is particularly sensitive to stimulation.
Psychosexual Stages
 Erik Erikson and psychosocial
stages (1959)
 emphasize the social relationships that
are important at every stage of life.
 Eight distinct stages,
 five stages up to the age of 18 years
and
 three further stages beyond, well
into adulthood.
 During each stage, the person
experiences a psychosocial crisis which
could have a positive or negative
outcome for personality development.
 LEARNING THEORIES OF
PERSONALITY
 the behaviorist perspective believes that individuals are
born with a clean slate and all behavior is attained through
the environment.
 They denied the importance of any internal causes of
behavior—motives, traits, intentions, goals.
 Theories-
 conditioning and observational or social learning
theories
LEARNING THEORIES OF
PERSONALITY
 Conditioning theories
 focused on how the external
environment molds overt
behavior.
 Pavlov-
 classical conditioning

 Skinner-
 operant conditioning
 LEARNING THEORIES OF
PERSONALITY
 Bandura’s Social learning theory and social Cognitive
Theory
 Observational learning occurs when an organism’s
responding is influenced by the observation of others,
who are called models.
 Bandura and like-minded theorists originally called
their modified brand of behaviorism social learning
theory. Today, Bandura refers to his model as social
cognitive theory
THE COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL
VIEWPOINT
 During the 1960s, a new perspective known as cognitive
psychology emerged.
 This area of psychology focuses on mental processes like
memory, thinking, problem-solving, language, and
decision-making
 Influenced by psychologists such as Jean Piaget and
Albert Bandura, the cognitive perspective has grown
tremendously in recent decades.
 Cognitive psychologists often utilize an information-
processing model (comparing the human mind to a
computer) to conceptualize how information is
acquired, processed, stored, and utilized.
HEREDITY INFLUENCE ON
DEVELOPMENT
 No person can be born without heredity and genes cannot
develop without proper environment. An individual’s heredity is
present since the moment of conception, and some
environmental conditions also start influencing him from this
very stage.
 Every human being is born as a result of conception which takes
place due to certain biological Factors and process
Progress Before Birth: Prenatal
Development
 The prenatal period extends from conception to birth,
usually encompassing nine months of pregnancy.
 A great deal of important development occurs before birth.
 Development begins with conception. Conception occurs when
fertilization creates a zygote, a one celled organism formed
by the union of a sperm and an egg.
 All the other cells in your body developed from this single cell.
Each of your cells contains enduring messages from your parents
carried on the chromosomes that lie within its nucleus.
 Each chromosome houses many genes, the functional units in
hereditary transmission. Genes carry the details of your
hereditary blueprints, which are revealed gradually throughout
life
The Course of Prenatal
Development
 The prenatal period is divided into three phases:
 (1) the germinal stage (the fi rst two weeks), (2) the
embryonic stage (two weeks to two months), and (3) the fetal
stage (two months to birth).
 Germinal Stage
 is the first phase of prenatal development, encompassing the
first two weeks after conception
 This brief stage begins when a zygote is created through
fertilization. Within 36 hours, rapid cell division begins, and
the zygote becomes a microscopic mass of multiplying cells.
 This mass of cells slowly migrates along the mother’s fallopian
tube to the uterine cavity. On about the seventh day, the cell
mass begins to implant itself in the uterine wall.
 Embryonic Stage
 The embryonic stage is the second stage of pre natal
development, lasting from two weeks until the end of the
second month. During this stage, most of the vital organs and
bodily systems begin to form in the developing organism,
which is now called an embryo
 Although the embryo is typically only about an inch long at
the end of this stage, it’s already beginning to look human
 Fetal Stage
 The fetal stage is the third stage of prenatal development,
lasting from two months through birth.
 The first two months of the fetal stage bring rapid bodily
growth, as muscles and bones begin to form.
 The developing organism, now called a fetus, becomes
capable of physical movements as skeletal structures harden.
Organs formed in the embryonic stage continue to grow and
gradually begin to function.
Infancy
 Infants (birth to age 1) and toddlers (ages 1 to 2) grow
quickly; bodily changes are rapid and profound
 physical and brain changes; development of reflexes,
motor skills, sensations, perceptions, and learning
skills
 Within hours of a normal birth, most infants are alert
and beginning to react to their surroundings.
Although immature, all body systems are operating
Physical Development
 Babies grow very rapidly during the first 2 years, often doubling
their birth weight by 4 to 6 months of age and tripling it
 The skeletal structures that form during the prenatal period are
initially soft cartilage that will gradually ossify (harden) into
bony material.
 Infancy and physical development
 Normal infants are capable of sensation, or the ability to
respond to sensory information in the external world.
 Puberty: the physical transition from child to adult
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRAIN
 The brain grows at an astounding rate early in life, increasing
from 25 percent of its eventual adult weight at birth to 75
percent of adult weight by age 2.
 Indeed, the last 3 prenatal months and the first 2 years after
birth have been termed the period of the brain growth spurt
because more than half of one’s adult brain weight is gained
at this time (Glaser, 2000).
 Between the seventh prenatal month and a child’s first
birthday, the brain increases in weight by about 1.7 grams a
day, or more than a milligram per minute.
 However, an increase in brain weight is a general index that
tells us very little about how or when various parts of the
brain mature and affect other aspects of development.
 Motor Development
 Motor development refers to the progression of
muscular coordination required for physical activities.
 Basic motor skills include grasping and reaching for objects,
manipulating objects, sitting up, crawling, walking, and
running.
 Motor skills, or behavioral abilities, develop in conjunction
with physical growth. In other words, infants must learn to
engage in motor activities within the context of their
changing bodies.
 REFLEXES AND MOTOR SKILLS
 Because infants cannot endure on their own, new-borns have
specific built‐in or prewired abilities for survival and adaptive
purposes.
 Reflexes are automatic reactions to stimulation that enable infants
to respond to the environment before any learning has taken place
 For instance, babies automatically suck when presented with a
nipple, turn their heads when a parent speaks, grasp at a finger that
is pressed into their hand, and startle when exposed to loud noises.
Some reflexes, such as blinking, are permanent. Others, such as
grasping, disappear after several months and eventually become
voluntary responses.
 Sexual Maturation and Development
 Maturation of the reproductive system occurs at roughly the same
time as the adolescent growth spurt and follows a predictable
sequence for girls and boys. There are many individual differences
in the timing of physical and sexual maturation This perfectly
normal biological variation may be observed in any middle school
classroom, where one will find a wide assortment of bodies, ranging
from those that are very childlike to those that are quite adult like.
 Sexual Development
 Like all forms of human development, sexual development begins at birth.
Sexual development includes not only the physical changes that occur as
children grow, but also the sexual knowledge and beliefs they come to learn
and the behaviors they show
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
 Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Theory, Vygotsky’s
Sociocultural Viewpoint, Information-Processing
Perspectives
 Development of Language and Communication Skills
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
 Cognitive development
 refers to transitions in youngsters’ patterns of thinking,
including reasoning, remembering, and problem solving
 investigation of cognitive development was dominated in most
of the second half of the 20th century by the theory of Jean
Piaget (Kessen, 1996).
 Much of our discussion of cognitive development is devoted to
Piaget’s theory and the research it generated, although we’ll also
delve into other approaches
Overview of Piaget’s
Stage Theory
 Many of his ideas were based on insights gleaned from careful
observations of his own three children during their infancy.
 Piaget proposed that youngsters progress through four major
stages of cognitive development, which are characterized by
fundamentally different thought processes:
 Piaget regarded his age norms as approximations and
acknowledged that transitional ages may vary, but he was
convinced that all children progress through the stages of
cognitive development in the same order.
A Comparison of Preoperational and Concrete-
Operational Thought Concept
Preoperational Concrete-Operational
 Egocentrism  Egocentrism
 Children typically assume that  Children typically assume that
others share their point of view others share their point of view
 Animism  Animism
 Children are likely to assume  Children are more aware of the
that unfamiliar objects that biological bases for life and do
move on their own have not attribute lifelike qualities to
lifelikequalities. inanimates
 Centration  Centration
 Children make judgments based  Children can ignore misleading
on perceptual appearances and appearances and focus on more
focus on a single aspect of a than one aspect of a situation
situation when seeking answers when seeking answers to a
to a problem problem (decentration).
A Comparison of Preoperational and Concrete-
Operational Thought Concept
Preoperational Concrete-Operational
 Irreversibility/reversibility  Irreversibility/reversibility
 Children cannot mentally undo  Children can mentally negate
an action they have witnessed. changes they have witnessed to
They cannot think back to make before/after comparisons
theway an object or situation and consider how changes have
was before the object or altered the situation.
situation changed.  Causality
 Causality  Children have a much better
 Limited awareness of causality appreciation of causal principles
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
 In recent decades, as the limitations and weaknesses of Piaget’s ideas
have become more apparent, some developmental researchers have
looked elsewhere for theoretical guidance.
 Ironically, the theory that has recently inspired the greatest interest—
Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory—dates back to around the same
time that Piaget began formulating his theory (1920s–1930s).
 Sociocultural theory grew from the work of seminal psychologist Lev
Vygotsky, who believed that parents, caregivers, peers, and the culture
at large were responsible for developing higher-order functions.
 According to Vygotsky, children are born with basic biological
constraints on their minds. Each culture, however, provides what he
referred to as 'tools of intellectual adaptation.' These tools allow
children to use their basic mental abilities in a way that is adaptive to
the culture in which they live
 Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s perspectives on cognitive development have
much in common, but they also differ in several important respects
 First, in Piaget’s theory, cognitive development is primarily fueled by
individual children’s active exploration of the world around them. The
child is viewed as the agent of change. In contrast, Vygotsky places
enormous emphasis on how children’s cognitive development is fueled
by socia interactions with parents, teachers, and older children who can
provide invaluable guidance
 Second, Piaget viewed cognitive development as a universal process
that should unfold in largely the same way across widely disparate
cultures. Vygotsky, on the other hand, asserted that culture exerts great
infl uence over how cognitive growth unfolds
 Third, Piaget viewed children’s gradual mastery of language as just
another aspect of cognitive development, whereas Vygotsky argued that
language acquisition plays a crucial, central role in fostering cognitive
development
 Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development
 ‘… the distance between the actual development level as
determined by independent problem solving and the level of
potential development as determined through problem-
solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more
capable peers.’
 This concept underpins the notion of ‘scaffolding’ in which
a more knowledgeable other provides support to promote a
child’s cognitive development.
 Scaffolding consists of the activities provided by the
educator, or more competent peer, to support the student
as he or she is led through the zone of proximal
development
INFORMATION-PROCESSING
PERSPECTIVES
 This model, developed in the 1960's and 1970's, conceptualizes
children's mental processes through the metaphor of a computer
processing, encoding, storing, and decoding data.
 In information processing terms, the individual must be able to:
 1. Receive information
 2. Understand information
 3. Organize and process information (categorize, create rules, use
symbols)
 4. Recall information
 5. Use information.
 Much information-processing theory has developed as a result of the
work of Alan Turing. He was a British mathematician whose work on
artificial intelligence systems, what we now call computers.
DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE
AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS
 Language: Turning Thoughts into Words
 A language consists of symbols that convey meaning, plus
rules for combining those symbols, that can be used to
generate an infi nite variety of messages.

 Milestones in Language Development

SOCIAL AND PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT
 Emotional Development, Temperament, and
Attachment
 Development of the Self and Social Cognition
 Sex Differences and Gender-Role Development
 Aggression, Altruism, and Moral Development
Emotional Development,
Temperament, and Attachment
 Psychosocial development occurs as children form relationships,
interact with others, and understand and manage their feelings.
In social and emotional development, forming healthy
attachments is very important and is the major social milestone
of infancy
 Early Emotional Development: Attachment
 Attachment is a long-standing connection or bond with
others. Developmental psychologists are interested in how
infants reach this milestone. They ask such questions as: How
do parent and infant attachment bonds form? How does
neglect affect these bonds? What accounts for children’s
attachment differences?
 Researchers have shown a keen interest in how infant-
mother attachments are formed early in life. Children
eventually may form attachments to many people,
including their fathers, grandparents, and others (Cassidy,
1999).
 However, a child’s fi rst important attachment usually
occurs with his or her mother because in most cultures she
is the principal caregiver, especially in the early years of life
 separation anxiety—emotional distress seen in many
infants when they are separated from people with whom
they have formed an attachment
 Theories of Attachment
 Harry Harlow- The behavioral theory of attachment would suggest that
an infant would form an attachment with a carer that provides
food. Harlow’s explanation was that attachment develops as a result of
the mother providing “tactile comfort
 Bowlby argued that there must be a biological basis for attachment.
According to his view, infants are biologically programmed to emit
behavior (smiling, cooing, clinging, and so on) that triggers an
affectionate, protective response from adults.
 Bowlby’s theory has guided most of the research on attachment over
the last several decades, including Mary Ainsworth’s influential work
on patterns of attachment
 While Bowlby thought attachment was an all-or-nothing process, Mary
Ainsworth’s (1970) research showed otherwise. Ainsworth wanted to
know if children differ in the ways they bond, and if so, how.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF AND
SOCIAL COGNITION
 During early childhood, children start to develop a "self-concept," the
attributes, abilities, attitudes and values that they believe define them.
By age 3, (between 18 and 30 months), children have developed their
Categorical Self, which is concrete way of viewing themselves in "this or
that“ labels.
 As long-term memory develops, children also gain the Remembere
Self. The Remembered Self incorporates memories (and information
recounted by adults about personal events) that become part of an
individual's life story (sometimes referred to as autobiographical
memory).
 In addition, young children develop an Inner Self, private thoughts,
feelings, and desires that nobody else knows about unless a child
chooses to share this information.
SEX DIFFERENCES AND GENDER-
ROLE DEVELOPMENT
 Sex and gender are different concepts that are often used
interchangeably.
 Sex refers to “the different biological and physiological characteristics
of males and females, such as reproductive organs, chromosomes,
hormones, etc.”
 Gender refers to "the socially constructed characteristics of women and
men – such as norms, roles and relationships of and between groups of
women and men.
 The Development of Sex and Gender
 Both sex and gender have a developmental story to tell that begins
before birth (prenatal) and continues throughout the lifespan
 Gender-role development is one of the most important areas of human
development. Gender identity typically develops in stages (infancy to
adulthood)
 Gender identity is defined as a personal conception of oneself as male
or female (or rarely, both or neither). This concept is intimately related
to the concept of gender role, which is defined as the outward
manifestations of personality that reflect the gender identity.
 Gender identity, in nearly all instances, is self-identified, as a result of a
combination of inherent and extrinsic or environmental factors; gender
role, on the other hand, is manifested within society by observable
factors such as behavior and appearance.
 For example, if a person considers himself a male and is most
comfortable referring to his personal gender in masculine terms, then
his gender identity is male. However, his gender role is male only if he
demonstrates typically male characteristics in behavior, dress, and/or
mannerisms.
 Thus, gender role is often an outward expression of gender identity, but
not necessarily so. In most individuals, gender identity and gender role
are congruous
Moral development
 Moral development refers to the process through which children
develop the standards of right and wrong within their society,
based on social and cultural norms, and laws.
 Piaget's theory of moral reasoning
 Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, explored how children developed
moral reasoning. He rejected the idea that children learn and
internalize the rules and morals of society by being given the rules
and forced to adhere to them.
 Through his research on how children formed their judgments
about moral behavior, he recognized that children learn morality
best by having to deal with others in groups.
 He reasoned that there was a process by which children conform to
society's norms of what is right and wrong, and that the process was
active rather than passive.

The Development
of Moral Reasoning
 Kohlberg’s Stage Theory
 Lawrence Kohlberg, an American psychologist, extended Piaget's work in
cognitive reasoning into adolescence and adulthood. He felt that moral
development was a slow process and evolved over time
 Still, his six stages of moral development, drafted in 1958, mirrors Piaget's
early model. Kohlberg believed that individuals made progress by
mastering each stage, one at a time.
 His six stages (grouped under three levels) of moral development
were based on the response of a group of children to a story posing
questions and moral dilemmas.
 the preconventional level
 Younger children at the preconventional level think in terms of
external authority. Acts are wrong benumber cause they are
punished, or right because they lead to positive consequences.
 the conventional level
 Older children who have reached the conventional level of moral
reasoning see rules as necessary for maintaining social order. They
therefore accept these rules as their own.
 postconventional level,
 During adolescence, some youngsters move on to the
postconventional level, which involves working out a personal code
of ethics. Acceptance of rules is less rigid, and moral thinking shows
some fl exibility.
The Family; Television and Computers; School and
Peers
THE FAMILY
 School readiness
 Emotional development
 Social development
 Physical development
 Cognitive development
TELEVISION AND COMPUTERS
 Television:
 Effects of television viewing on child development, highly
contested topic within child development and psychology
involving the consequences for children from the content of
and the duration of their exposure to television (TV)
programming
 Throughout the following decades, psychologists,
sociologists, criminologists, and other social scientists have
argued a number of different perspectives with respect to
whether television violence facilitates or triggers violent
behaviours in children
 Computer:
 Instant access to resources
 Improved communication
 Less physical activity
 Hindered social development
 Behavioural issues
 Potential psychological effects
SCHOOL AND PEER GROUP
 Academic Potential
 Social Skills
 Character Building and Self Concept
 INTRODUCTION TO DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY
 BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF DEVELOPMENT
 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
 SOCIAL AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
 THE CONTEXT OF DEVELOPMENT