Child Psychology Vs. Developmental Psychology
Child psychology focuses on the mental, emotional, and social development of children, while developmental psychology studies human growth and development across the entire lifespan. Child psychology is a subset of developmental psychology, specifically concentrating on childhood experiences and challenges.
Child Psychology basically encompasses the study of various different psychological elements that effect individuals throughout their young growing phase. From birth to puberty, the studies will usually help a child psychologist to understand the circumstances that led up to the current position the individual is likely to lean towards.
Child psychology studies the mental state and changes that generally take place in an individual from the infancy stage right up to the age of two. Few applications of psychological styles are often used to ensure optimal results are achieved. Through child psychology it is possible to understand the basic psychological needs of children. From biological to emotional phases, everything can be explored.
In development psychology the physical and mental changes that take place during growth right from infancy are carefully studied. The social interactions and changes are usually meticulously studied and documented so that explanations and theories can be formed as to the connection between these elements, during any individual’s life cycle.
Studies are done over a long period of time, thus making development psychology a more focused and lengthy process of disseminating information. Most commonly studied, is the progressive maturation and aging human process, which basically encompasses how everything affects the individual’s growth both mentally and physically.
For a development psychologist, every development stage has to find its link to why and how reactions are experienced.
In order to fully grasp the differences between these two psychology styles, there is a need to look into the various aspects that connect each style to its subject.
An in-depth Look into Child Psychology
Perhaps the most significant clue would be in the title name itself. Child psychology involves the study of growth both physically and mentally from conception until the adolescent age. For this short but very important growth period, a lot of different types of changes are usually noted.
It is possible to conclude many behavioral patterns in an adult by looking back into the past at this very impressionable period of the individual’s life. Extensive studies have pointed to this very conclusive and accepted methodology of why people turn out the way they do, simply based on their childhood experiences.
Often hereditary issues are also given some level of attention because child psychologists work on the assumption that there is a definite connection between this and the way children address their own issues during development and growth stages. Child psychologists are usually able to help parents to deal with their children’s problems in a more effective manner once a correct diagnosis has been made.
Within the development stages, child psychology would usually focus on growth size when it comes to the study of physical development; while for the cognitive development the focus would usually be on the perceptions formed, based on memories, language and thought processes, which are all recognized as inter-related.
As for the socio-emotional development study, communication and emotional skills would be the main focus when conclusions are being drawn about any reactions unfolded.
Although other aspects are usually considered as part of the process in trying to understand the way a child develops both mentally and physically, the biological conditions that influence this growth is not pivotal to any judgments made.
An In-depth Look into Development Psychology
The groups that a development psychologist would typically deal with often differ in demographics as well as in age. This is comparatively quite unlike child psychologists whose primary focus would very likely be limited to children.
A development psychologist will normally have a much broader study approach, which usually includes other corresponding areas such as the cognitive, motivational and emotional ties that contribute to the lifelong growth and behavioral patterns of those under observation.
From infancy to childhood right up to adulthood and old age, all the various different stages of growth will be studied and conclusions will be drawn based on the entire progressions made, again unlike the Child Psychologists who primarily deals with very young age groups. The focus would take into consideration elements such as perception, thinking processes based on emotional and learning phases, language skills, personality and connections made from social relationships.
For development psychologists each developing phase of a subject studied can vary dramatically as the connecting and contributing factors are constantly changing as growth takes place both mentally and physically.
In contrast, child psychologists would have a rather limited period of growth to work with, meaning just the childhood phase.
Development psychologists keenly adopt techniques based on scientific methodology to systematically analyze all the information presented through the study, so that conclusive findings can be ascertained.
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