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. 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.
In sociology, socialization is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained".
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to adulthood. Adolescence is usually associated with the teenage years, but its physical, psychological or cultural expressions may begin earlier and end later. Puberty now typically begins during preadolescence, particularly in females. Physical growth and cognitive development can extend into the early 20s. Age provides only a rough marker of adolescence, and scholars have not agreed upon a precise definition. Traditionally, it includes ages 10 to 19, but an expansive definition includes ages 10 to 24 to account for a more comprehensive understanding of this phase of life.
Conduct disorder (CD) is a mental disorder diagnosed in childhood or adolescence that presents itself through a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior that includes theft, lies, physical violence that may lead to destruction, and wanton breaking of rules, in which the basic rights of others or major age-appropriate norms are violated. These behaviors are often referred to as "antisocial behaviors." It is often seen as the precursor to antisocial personality disorder, which by definition cannot be diagnosed until the individual is 18 years old. Conduct disorder may result from parental rejection and neglect and can be treated with family therapy, as well as behavioral modifications and pharmacotherapy. Conduct disorder is estimated to affect 51.1 million people globally as of 2013.
Youth culture refers to the societal norms of children, adolescents, and young adults. Specifically, it comprises the processes and symbolic systems that are shared by the youth demographic and are distinct from those of adults in the community.
In sociology, a peer group is both a social group and a primary group of people who have similar interests (homophily), age, background, or social status. The members of this group are likely to influence the person's beliefs and behaviour.
Granville Stanley Hall was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on human life span development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark University. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Hall as the 72nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, in a tie with Lewis Terman.
Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, as articulated in the second half of the 20th century by Erik Erikson in collaboration with Joan Erikson, is a comprehensive psychoanalytic theory that identifies a series of eight stages that a healthy developing individual should pass through from infancy to late adulthood. According to Erikson's theory the results from each stage, whether positive or negative, influences the results of succeeding stages. Erikson published a book called Childhood and Society around the 1950s that made his research well known on the eight stages of psychosocial development. Erikson was originally influenced by Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stages of development. He began by working with Freud's theories specifically, but as he began to dive deeper into biopsychosocial development and how other environmental factors affect human development, he soon progressed past Freud's theories and developed his own ideas.
Egocentrism is the inability to differentiate between self and other. More specifically, it is the inability to accurately assume or understand any perspective other than one's own. Egocentrism is found across the life span: in infancy, early childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Although egocentric behaviors are less prominent in adulthood, the existence of some forms of egocentrism in adulthood indicates that overcoming egocentrism may be a lifelong development that never achieves completion. Adults appear to be less egocentric than children because they are faster to correct from an initially egocentric perspective than children, not because they are less likely to initially adopt an egocentric perspective.
Relational aggression or alternative aggression is a type of aggression in which harm is caused by damaging someone's relationships or social status.
Claus Offe is a political sociologist of Marxist orientation. He received his PhD from the University of Frankfurt and his Habilitation at the University of Konstanz. In Germany, he has held chairs for Political Science and Political Sociology at the Universities of Bielefeld (1975–1989) and Bremen (1989–1995), as well as at the Humboldt-University of Berlin (1995–2005). He has worked as fellow and visiting professor at the Institutes for Advanced Study in Stanford, Princeton, and the Australian National University as well as Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley and The New School University, New York. Once a student of Jürgen Habermas, the left-leaning German academic is counted among the second generation Frankfurt School. He currently teaches political sociology at a private university in Berlin, the Hertie School of Governance.
Paul B. Baltes was a German psychologist whose broad scientific agenda was devoted to establishing and promoting the life-span orientation of human development. He was also a theorist in the field of the psychology of aging. He has been described by American Psychologist as one of the most influential developmental psychologists.
Identity formation, also called identity development or identity construction, is a complex process in which humans develop a clear and unique view of themselves and of their identity.
Jost Reinecke is the professor of Quantitative Methods of Empirical Social Research at Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University.
Religious identity is a specific type of identity formation. Particularly, it is the sense of group membership to a religion and the importance of this group membership as it pertains to one's self-concept. Religious identity is not necessarily the same as religiousness or religiosity. Although these three terms share a commonality, religiousness and religiosity refer to both the value of religious group membership as well as participation in religious events. Religious identity, on the other hand, refers specifically to religious group membership regardless of religious activity or participation.
Lisa M. Diamond is an American psychologist and feminist. She is a professor of developmental psychology and health psychology at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on sexual orientation development, sexual identity, and bonding.
Laurence Steinberg is an American university professor of psychology, specializing in adolescent psychological development. Steinberg is a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is a Distinguished University Professor and Neuroscience, and where he holds a named position, the "Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience". He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been a Faculty Scholar of the William T. Grant Foundation, and was Director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. Steinberg is a former president of the Division of Developmental Psychology of the American Psychological Association and of the Society for Research on Adolescence. Steinberg’s research has focused on a range of topics in the study of contemporary adolescence, including adolescent brain development, risk-taking and decision-making, parent-adolescent relationships, adolescent employment, high school reform, and juvenile justice. Steinberg proposed the Dual Systems Model of adolescent brain development. He has been a frequent consultant to state and federal agencies and lawmakers on child labor, secondary education, and juvenile justice policy.
Tina Malti is a Canadian-German child psychologist of Palestinian descent. She is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and founding director of the Laboratory for Social-Emotional Development and Intervention, as well as founding director of the Centre for Child Development, Mental Health, and Policy at the University of Toronto.
Child development in Africa addresses the variables and social changes that occur in African children from infancy through adolescence. Three complementary lines of scholarship have sought to generate knowledge about child development in Africa, specifically rooted in endogenous, African ways of knowing: analysis of traditional proverbs, theory-building, and documentation of parental ethno-theories. The first approach has examined the indigenous formulations of child development and socialisation values embedded in African languages and oral traditions. Several collections of proverbs have been published in different African languages, and their content has been analysed to show the recurrence of the themes of shared communal responsibility for children's moral guidance and the importance of providing it early in life.
Rolf Eduard Helmut Muuss was a German-American psychologist and academic. His work in psychology focused primarily on adolescent psychology and development. Muuss' academic career was spent primarily at Goucher College, where he taught from 1959 to 1995. Muuss enlisted and fought in the Luftwaffe during WWII.
