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.
The diagnostic category pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), as opposed to specific developmental disorders (SDD), was a group of disorders characterized by delays in the development of multiple basic functions including socialization and communication. It was defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
Baby sign language is the use of manual signing allowing infants and toddlers to communicate emotions, desires, and objects prior to spoken language development. With guidance and encouragement, signing develops from a natural stage in infant development known as gesture. These gestures are taught in conjunction with speech to hearing children, and are not the same as a sign language. Some common benefits that have been found through the use of baby sign programs include an increased parent-child bond and communication, decreased frustration, and improved self-esteem for both the parent and child. Researchers have found that baby sign neither benefits nor harms the language development of infants. Promotional products and ease of information access have increased the attention that baby sign receives, making it pertinent that caregivers become educated before making the decision to use baby sign.
Baby Einstein is an American franchise and line of multimedia products, including home video programs, CDs, books, flash cards, toys, and baby gear that specialize in interactive activities for infants and toddlers under three years old, created by Julie Aigner-Clark. The franchise is produced by The Baby Einstein Company.
Stanley Greenspan was a clinical professor of Psychiatry, Behavioral Science, and Pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School and a practicing child psychiatrist. He was best known for developing the floortime approach for attempting to treat children with autistic spectrum disorders and developmental disabilities.
Selma Fraiberg (1918–1981) was an American child psychoanalyst, author and social worker.
Language development in humans is a process which starts early in life. Infants start without knowing a language, yet by 10 months, babies can distinguish speech sounds and engage in babbling. Some research has shown that the earliest learning begins in utero when the fetus starts to recognize the sounds and speech patterns of its mother's voice and differentiate them from other sounds after birth.
Hospitalism was a pediatric diagnosis used in the 1930s to describe infants who wasted away while in a hospital. The symptoms could include decreased physical development and disruption of perceptual-motor skills and language. In the first half of the 20th century, hospitalism was discovered to be linked to social deprivation between an infant and its caregiver. The term was in use in 1945, but the term can be traced back as early as 1897.
Sir Frederic Truby King, generally known as Truby King, was a New Zealand health reformer and Director of Child Welfare. He is best known as the founder of the Plunket Society.
Child development involves the biological, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the conclusion of adolescence.
Margaret Morris was a British dancer, choreographer, artist and teacher. She founded the Margaret Morris Movement, Celtic Ballet and two Scottish National Ballets in Glasgow (1947) and in Pitlochry (1960). Morris devised a system of movement notation, which was first published in 1928.
Mental disorders diagnosed in childhood can be neurodevelopmental, emotional, or behavioral disorders. These disorders negatively impact the mental and social wellbeing of a child, and children with these disorders require support from their families and schools. Childhood mental disorders often persist into adulthood. These disorders are usually first diagnosed in infancy, childhood, or adolescence, as laid out in the DSM-5 and in the ICD-11.
Andrew is the English form of the given name, common in many countries. The word is derived from the Greek: Ἀνδρέας, Andreas, itself related to Ancient Greek: ἀνήρ/ἀνδρός aner/andros, "man", thus meaning "manly" and, as consequence, "brave", "strong", "courageous", and "warrior". In the King James Bible, the Greek "Ἀνδρέας" is translated as Andrew.
The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI), also known as Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI), is a worldwide programme of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), launched in 1992 in India following the adoption of the Innocenti Declaration on breastfeeding promotion in 1990. The initiative is a global effort for improving the role of maternity services to enable mothers to breastfeed babies for the best start in life. It aims at improving the care of pregnant women, mothers and newborns at health facilities that provide maternity services for protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding, in accordance with the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.
The Baby is a 1973 American psychological thriller film directed by Ted Post and written by Abe Polsky. The film stars Anjanette Comer, Ruth Roman, Marianna Hill, Suzanne Zenor, and David Manzy. It tells the story of a social worker who investigates an eccentric family which includes "Baby", a 21-year-old man who acts like an infant. The film is considered a cult classic.
Social cues are verbal or non-verbal signals expressed through the face, body, voice, motion and guide conversations as well as other social interactions by influencing our impressions of and responses to others. These percepts are important communicative tools as they convey important social and contextual information and therefore facilitate social understanding.
The Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood-Revised is a developmentally based diagnostic manual that provides clinical criteria for categorizing mental health and developmental disorders in infants and toddlers. It is organized into a five-part axis system. The book has been translated into several languages, and its model is utilized for the assessment of children up to five years of age.
Jana Marie Iverson is a developmental psychologist known for her research on the development of gestures and motor skills in relation to communicative development. She has worked with various populations including children at high risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), blind individuals, and preterm infants. She is currently a professor of psychology at Boston University.
Social emotional development represents a specific domain of child development. It is a gradual, integrative process through which children acquire the capacity to understand, experience, express, and manage emotions and to develop meaningful relationships with others. As such, social emotional development encompasses a large range of skills and constructs, including, but not limited to: self-awareness, joint attention, play, theory of mind, self-esteem, emotion regulation, friendships, and identity development.
The first half of the topic of agency deals with the behavioral sense, or outward expressive evidence thereof. In behavioral psychology, agents are goal-directed entities that are able to monitor their environment to select and perform efficient means-ends actions that are available in a given situation to achieve an intended goal. Behavioral agency, therefore, implies the ability to perceive and to change the environment of the agent. Crucially, it also entails intentionality to represent the goal-state in the future, equifinal variability to be able to achieve the intended goal-state with different actions in different contexts, and rationality of actions in relation to their goal to produce the most efficient action available. Cognitive scientists and Behavioral psychologists have thoroughly investigated agency attribution in humans and non-human animals, since social cognitive mechanisms such as communication, social learning, imitation, or theory of mind presuppose the ability to identify agents and differentiate them from inanimate, non-agentive objects. This ability has also been assumed to have a major effect on inferential and predictive processes of the observers of agents, because agentive entities are expected to perform autonomous behavior based on their current and previous knowledge and intentions. On the other hand, inanimate objects are supposed to react to external physical forces.
