Developmental Milestones

12/17/2015 - 1/27/2016
Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and the mental process. Behaviors are smiling, walking, and talking and the mental process such as feeling, thinking, and remembering. There are various major areas of psychology which are Development psychology, Cognitive psychology, Social psychology, and Behavioral psychology both classical and operant conditioning. Development psychology is the study or research that mostly focuses on or concern infants, children or adolescents thoughts and behavioral process across a life span. It studies the way in which human change and grows over the course of their lives. Developmental milestones explore how children play, learn, speak and acts by a certain age. For example,

Behavioral psychology is to help improve the mental and emotional disorders through behavior-modifying techniques. For example, some techniques that are applied are cognitive restructuring, behavioral modeling and, most commonly, classical and operant conditioning. Operant conditioning uses either reinforcement or punishment to increase or decrease a behavior. In Operant conditioning, the learner is rewarded with incentives. For an example imagine a parent teaching a child to potty train, if the child is successful the child will be rewarded with a treat. Eventually, the child forms an association between his behavior of potty training and receiving the reward. Classical conditioning is passive on the part of the learner; it involves making an association between an involuntary response and a

The first laboratory of psychology was established in the 1879 by a German physiologist and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt applied scientific methods of physiology and physics to question philosophy. Wundt created a laboratory to teach students the science of psychology. William James the founder of American psychology was the first to open a psychology laboratory in the United States; he is also the founder of American Psychological Association (APA). James and his students began doing laboratory experiments with contrast to structuralism. James believed when human perceives an object it is not separated into simpler elements. The example that was given is when a human see an apple; they see an apple not a shiny, red, round object. Another American psychologist, John Broadus Dotson Watson believed in the behaviorism approach, which is all behavior can be explained as a result of the environment. Watson also believed that the environment shapes the behavior. Watson performed an experiment with Rosalie Rayner to attempt to condition an eleven-month-old boy by the name of Albert b. to fear a laboratory rat. Watson and Rayner used the rat with sounds and other object to test Watson’s theory of emotional