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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. [1]
In psychology, developmental stage theories are theories that divide psychological development into distinct stages which are characterized by qualitative differences in behavior. [ 1 ] There are several different views about psychological and physical development and how they proceed throughout the life span.
Development before birth, or prenatal development (from Latin natalis 'relating to birth') is the process in which a zygote, and later an embryo, and then a fetus develops during gestation. Prenatal development starts with fertilization and the formation of the zygote , the first stage in embryonic development which continues in fetal ...
According to this theory, life span development has multiple trajectories (positive, negative, stable) and causes (biological, psychological, social, and cultural). Individual variation is a hallmark of this theory – not all individuals develop and age at the same rate and in the same manner. [15] Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory
A life history strategy is the "age- and stage-specific patterns" [2] and timing of events that make up an organism's life, such as birth, weaning, maturation, death, etc. [3] These events, notably juvenile development, age of sexual maturity, first reproduction, number of offspring and level of parental investment, senescence and death, depend ...
Glen Elder theorized the life course as based on five key principles: life-span development, human agency, historical time and geographic place, timing of decisions, and linked lives. As a concept, a life course is defined as "a sequence of socially defined events and roles that the individual enacts over time" (Giele and Elder 1998, p. 22).
Largely focusing on the development of the human mind through the life span, developmental psychology seeks to understand how people come to perceive, understand, and act within the world and how these processes change as they age. [314] [315] This may focus on intellectual, cognitive, neural, social, or moral development.
Ecological systems theory is a broad term used to capture the theoretical contributions of developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner. [1] Bronfenbrenner developed the foundations of the theory throughout his career, [2] published a major statement of the theory in American Psychologist, [3] articulated it in a series of propositions and hypotheses in his most cited book, The Ecology of ...