Developmental psychology is the scientific study of psychological changes that occur over the course of the human lifespan. Developmental psychologists investigate the development of perceptual and cognitive, as well as social/emotional abilities, characteristics and behaviour. Most research has focussed on child development, although some researchers have studied changes in human abilities and behaviour during adolescence, adulthood and old age (gerontology).

Specific topics in developmental psychology include: the development of object perception, categorisation, motor skills, attention, working memory, long-term memory, executive functioning, inductive and deductive reasoning, language, reading abilities, personality, temperament, social skills, self-identity, the understanding of specific domains, such as agency, animateness, causality, moral values, mathematics, and “theory of mind” (an awareness that other people have internal mental states such as thoughts and beliefs), and developmental disorders such as dyslexia and autism.

A central question in developmental psychology is whether there are innate cognitive modules that operate in specific ways on particular kinds of information, or whether knowledge and abilities are acquired from experience, using domain-general learning processes.

Descriptive/correlational studies in developmental psychology are used to characterise the course of development of a behaviour at different ages, using either cross-sectional or longitudinal population samples. Experimental studies allow comparisons between rival theories of development. Experimental designs are similar to those used in adult psychology, but with special experimental paradigms for preverbal infants, such as preferential looking, conditioned head-turn, or dishabituation studies. Both descriptive and experimental approaches are also applied to special populations, such as children with language impairment or autism, in order to understand normal as well as disordered development.

Many developmental psychologists work in applied settings, studying the effects of environmental factors such as parenting style, socioeconomic status, gender, cultural background, or stressful events such as bullying or parental marital breakup, on outcomes such as cognitive development, school performance, emotional adjustment and coping skills. Often this work has a specific view towards making recommendations regarding governmental or educational policies.

Recommended Textbooks

Butterworth, G. (2002). Developmental Psychology: A Student's Handbook. Psychology Press.

Goswami, U., (2002). Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development. Oxford, UK.

Summary Written By

Richard Leibbrandt

School of Informatics and Engineering

Flinders University of South Australia