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Child development theories focus on explaining how children change and grow over the course of childhood. These developmental theories center on various aspects of growth, including social, emotional, and cognitive development.
Developmental theories provide a framework for understanding and interpreting psychological, social, neuromaturational, and cognitive development during childhood and adolescence.
Developmental psychology investigates biological, genetic, neurological, psychosocial, cultural, and environmental factors of human growth (Burman, 2017). Over the years, developmental psychology has been influenced by numerous theories and models in varied branches of psychology (Burman, 2017).
Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of intellectual development which reflect the increasing sophistication of children’s thought.
As it became known, Erikson’s Psychosocial Developmental Theory produced a framework for organizing human growth, through all stages of life, into eight distinct stages: Key to the outcomes of the child stages as well as those afterward are the principles of social interaction and experience.
Developmental theories are unique among psychological theories in their focus on change over short and long periods of time. These theories describe children at various developmental times, but more importantly offer explanations for change in terms of what drives and constrains change.
Developmental theories offer explanations about how we develop, why we change over time and the kinds of influences that impact development. A theory guides and helps us interpret research findings as well.