Why Is Developmental Psychology Important

The scientific study of behavior and mental processes is known to us today as Psychology, and the study of it dates back to the Ancient Greeks. However, the first laboratory dedicated to psychological research was not founded until 1879, by Wilhelm Wundt. Following the development of the lab, many areas of applied psychology appeared; My favorites being, Developmental and Clinical. In 1896, Lightner Witmer is generally considered to have founded Clinical Psychology, although other great psychologists contributed greatly to this particular study throughout the years. In the late 1800’s, G. Stanley Hall became to be known as the founder of Developmental Psychology, but his studies were not structured in a way that produced useful data. Like any …show more content…
Until about 2 months ago, I was a single mother, so being as educated as possible is very important to me. Developmental psychology is the study of how and why humans change over the course of their lives. Psychologists researching this area were originally concerned with infants and children, however, the field eventually expanded to include adolescence, adults, aging and the entire life span. Some types of experiments performed in this area are: cross-sectional, longitudinal and correlational. Cross-sectional experiments involve groups of different ages, for example, young adults and elderly patients. This type of research can be done relatively quickly because they can all be done at the same point in time. Longitudinal research involves studying the same group of individuals over an extended period of time. The benefit of this research is that is allows researchers to see changes that are made over time. Lastly, correlational is aimed at determining if certain variable changes can lead to change in another variable. An example of this would be: does early academic success, lead to better grades later on in life when the child is becoming a young adult. I too, am also curious in knowing that answer because I performed very well in Elementary and Middle school. I found the study of developmental psychology to be very useful in helping us to better understand human development in areas such as: biological, social, emotion, and cognitive processes. This research can help us to better understand how our children develop, as well as others, and even ourselves. In turn, this helps us to better the way we interact with our children at certain stages of their lives, which can lead us to be better parents. I think it is vital as a parent to understand the way your child’s brain develops. It would have benefited my mother a great deal to learn about developmental