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Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire lifespan. Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking, feeling, and behaviors change throughout life. This field examines change across three major dimensions, which are physical development, cognitive development, and social emotional development. Within these three dimensions are a broad range of topics including motor skills, executive functions, moral understanding, language acquisition, social change, personality, emotional development, self-concept, and identity formation.
Ontogeny is the origination and development of an organism, usually from the time of fertilization of the egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to the study of the entirety of an organism's lifespan.
The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis is a complex set of direct influences and feedback interactions among three components: the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal glands. These organs and their interactions constitute the HPA axis.
Prenatal psychology can be seen as a part of developmental psychology, although historically it was developed in the heterogenous field of psychoanalysis. Its scope is the description and explanation of experience and behaviour of the individual before birth and postnatal consequences as well. In so far as the actual birth process is involved one can consider this perinatal psychology. Pre- and perinatal aspects are often discussed together.
Prenatal development includes the development of the embryo and of the fetus during a viviparous animal's gestation. Prenatal development starts with fertilization, in the germinal stage of embryonic development, and continues in fetal development until birth.
Evolutionary developmental psychology (EDP) is a research paradigm that applies the basic principles of evolution by natural selection, to understand the development of human behavior and cognition. It involves the study of both the genetic and environmental mechanisms that underlie the development of social and cognitive competencies, as well as the epigenetic processes that adapt these competencies to local conditions.
Tinbergen's four questions, named after 20th century biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, are complementary categories of explanations for animal behaviour. These are also commonly referred to as levels of analysis. It suggests that an integrative understanding of behaviour must include ultimate (evolutionary) explanations, in particular:
Vivette Glover is a British Professor of Perinatal Psychobiology at Imperial College London. She studies the effects of stress in pregnancy on the development of the fetus and child.
The palmar grasp reflex is a primitive and involuntary reflex found in infants of humans and most primates. When an object, such as an adult finger, is placed in an infant's palm, the infant's fingers reflexively grasp the object. Placement of the object triggers a spinal reflex, resulting from stimulation of tendons in the palm, that gets transmitted through motor neurons in the median and ulnar sensory nerves. The reverse motion can be induced by stroking the back or side of the hand. A fetus exhibits the reflex in utero by 28 weeks into gestation, and persists until development of rudimentary fine motor skills between two and six months of age.
John L. Locke is an American biolinguist who has contributed to the understanding of language development and the evolution of language. His work has focused on how language emerges in the social context of interaction between infants, children and caregivers, how speech and language disorders can shed light on the normal developmental process and vice versa, how brain and cognitive science can help illuminate language capability and learning, and on how the special life history of humans offers perspectives on why humans are so much more intensely social and vocally communicative than their primate relatives. In recent time he has authored widely accessible volumes designed for the general public on the nature of human communication and its origins.
Myron Arms Hofer is an American psychiatrist and research scientist, currently Sackler Institute Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. He is known for his research on basic developmental processes at work within the mother-infant relationship. Using animal models, he found unexpected neurobiological and behavioral regulatory processes within the observable interactions of the infant rat and its mother. Through an experimental analysis of these sensorimotor, thermal and nutrient-based processes, he has contributed to our understanding of the impact of early maternal separation, the origins of the attachment system, and the shaping of later development by variations in how mothers and infants interact.
Gilbert Gottlieb was an American psychologist.
The Maturational Theory of child development was introduced in 1925 by Dr. Arnold Gesell, an American educator, pediatrician and clinical psychologist whose studies focused on "the course, the pattern and the rate of maturational growth in normal and exceptional children"(Gesell 1928). Gesell carried out many observational studies during more than 50 years working at the Yale Clinic of Child Development, where he is credited as a founder. Gesell and his colleagues documented a set of behavioral norms that illustrate sequential & predictable patterns of growth and development. Gesell asserted that all children go through the same stages of development in the same sequence, although each child may move through these stages at their own rate Gesell's Maturational Theory has influenced child-rearing and primary education methods since it was introduced.
Darcia Narvaez is a Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame who has written extensively on issues of character, moral development, and human flourishing.
Homology in psychology, as in biology, refers to a relationship between characteristics that reflects the characteristics' origins in either evolution or development. Homologous behaviors can theoretically be of at least two different varieties. As with homologous anatomical characteristics, behaviors present in different species can be considered homologous if they are likely present in those species because the behaviors were present in a common ancestor of the two species. Alternatively, in much the same way as reproductive structures are considered homologous because they share a common origin in embryonic tissues, behaviors—or the neural substrates associated with those behaviors—can also be considered homologous if they share common origins in development.
Frances A. Champagne is a Canadian psychologist and University Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin known for her research in the fields of molecular neuroscience, maternal behavior, and epigenetics. Research in the Champagne lab explores the developmental plasticity that occurs in response to environmental experiences. She is known for her work on the epigenetic transmission of maternal behavior. Frances Champagne's research has revealed how natural variations in maternal behavior can shape the behavioral development of offspring through epigenetic changes in gene expression in a brain region specific manner. She won the NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2007 and the Frank A. Beach Young Investigator Award in Behavioral Neuroendocrinology in 2009. She has been described as the "bee's knees of neuroscience". She serves on the Committee on Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development Among Children and Youth in the United States.
Karola Stotz was a German scholar of philosophy of biology, cognitive science, and philosophy of science. With Paul E. Griffiths, she pioneered the use of experimental philosophy methods in the field of philosophy of science.
David Scott Moore is an American developmental psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Pitzer College, where he is the Director of the Claremont Infant Study Center. He is also Professor of Psychology at Claremont Graduate University. His research focuses on cognitive development and mental rotation in infants, as well as behavioral epigenetics. His 2002 book, The Dependent Gene, criticized some of the fundamental assumptions underlying the nature-nurture debate. His 2015 book, The Developing Genome: An Introduction to Behavioral Epigenetics, received positive reviews, and was awarded the American Psychological Association's Eleanor Maccoby and William James Book Awards in 2016. A short précis of the book was subsequently published in WIREs Systems Biology and Medicine. Moore's work has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal,The New York Times, Scientific American, and Parents.
Mark S. Blumberg is an American professor, neuroscientist, researcher, and author who specializes in the fields of developmental psychobiology and behavioral neuroscience. He is currently an F. Wendell Miller Professor and department chair in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Iowa. In addition to writing academic research articles, Blumberg has served as the editor-in-chief of Behavioral Neuroscience and authored several books, including Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution. His research also appeared on a 2020 episode of the Netflix series, Babies.
Lorraine E. Bahrick is a developmental psychologist known for her research on intermodal perception and effects of inter-sensory redundancy on learning in infancy and early childhood. Her work in these areas involves investigating how the integration of information from various sensory modalities, such as vision, hearing, and touch, contributes to the cognitive, perceptual, and social development of infants and children. She also explores how the redundancy or overlap of sensory information, influences these developmental processes. She is Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Florida International University and the Director of Infant Development Lab.
References
- Michel, G. F., & Moore, C. L. (1995). Developmental Psychobiology: An Interdisciplinary Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press ISBN 978-0262133128
- Blumberg, M.S. (2002). Body Heat: Temperature and Life On Earth. Harvard University Press ISBN 978-0674013698
- Blumberg, M.S. (2005). Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior. Basic Books ISBN 978-1560259008
- Gottlieb, G. (1991). Individual Development and Evolution: The Genesis of Novel Behavior. Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0195068931
- Goodfellow, Molly J.; Lindquist, Derick H. (March 2014). "Significant long-term, but not short-term, hippocampal-dependent memory impairment in adult rats exposed to alcohol in early postnatal life". Developmental Psychobiology. 56 (6): 1316–26. doi:10.1002/dev.21210. PMID 24691725.
- Lickliter, Robert; Honeycutt, Hunter (2003). "Developmental Dynamics: Toward a Biologically Plausible Evolutionary Psychology". Psychological Bulletin. 129 (6): 819–835. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.6.819. PMID 14599279.
- Moore, D. S. (2001). The Dependent Gene: The Fallacy of "Nature vs. Nurture". New York, NY: Henry Holt ISBN 978-0805072808
- Narvaez, D.; Moore, D. S.; Witherington, D. C.; Vandiver, T. I.; Lickliter, R. (2022). "Evolving Evolutionary Psychology". American Psychologist. 77 (3): 424–438. doi:10.1037/amp0000849. PMID 34780243. S2CID 244132848.