Lifespan Developmental Psychology

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Life span developmental psychology is the field of psychology that involves the examination of both constancy and change in human behavior across the life span, that is, from conception to death. The focus of the study of developmental psychology is to further our knowledge of how we evolve over our entire life span. The study of development is possible within a range of topics in modern psychology like social psychology, cognitive psychology, abnormal psychology, comparative psychology, and neuro psychology. Child development is one of the studies in developmental psychology. The study of children is important because it has the potential to inform us about the nature of human development. By studying the earlier changes of behavior, we can …show more content…

If there is no single path that development should take, then that is multi-directionality. Development is comprised of multiple abilities. These abilities go different directions and show different types of change. In development, there is a belief that development involves both gains and losses. Baltes believed that any developmental process involves both gains and losses. Development varies around the different contexts in which we live our lives. Baltes said that developmental psychology is multi-disciplinary. The first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development was Jean Piaget. He contributed a theory of child cognitive development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities. Before Piaget, the common idea in psychology was that children are merely less competent thinkers than adults.Piaget thought that cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of growing up and experiencing the different environments. There are three main stages to adulthood: early adulthood, middle adulthood, and late