1.1 Developmental psychology. Definition, subject and tasks of developmental psychology.
Developmental psychology – is the branch of psychology that studies the facts and laws of human development, the age dynamics of his mind. The subject of developmental psychology’ studies – a developing, changing in the ontogeny normal, healthy person. Developmental Psychology identifies age – related changes in human behavior, and seeks to explain these changes, to reveal patterns of purchase by people of experience and knowledge. In the center of attention – the various forms of mental organization, typical for certain periods of the human life course. Psychology aims to study the integrity of mental development in the whole space of human life from birth to death, the most important task – the study of the changing, developing the individual in a changing world.
The subject of developmental psychology – age periods of development, the causes and mechanisms of transition from one age period to another, the general patterns and trends, pace and focus of mental development in ontogenesis. The following branches of developmental psychology are singled out: the psychology of the infant, early childhood psychology, pre–school psychology, psychology of the younger schoolboy, teenage psychology, psychology of adolescence, middle age psychology, psychology of old age (gerontopsychology). The most important part of psychology has been and remains a child psychology. D. Elkonin in his "Introduction to child psychology," defined it as the study of the subject of the process of becoming "subject diverse human activities" of a helpless newborn.
At the turn of XIX–XX centuries developmental psychology as child psychology emerged as an independent field of knowledge. Released in 1882, a book by German biologist W. Preyer "Child’s mind" is considered the starting point of a systematic scientific study of mental development in childhood. Over the past time, the very notion of the subject of child psychology (understanding of what should be studied) repeatedly transformed, which was closely linked to the change in research methodology. Initially, during the second half of XIX–early XX century., The task of the scientists has been collecting and storing specific data, the empirical data, the study of the phenomenology of mental development in childhood. It was the search for answers to questions about what is happening in the children's development, when and in what sequence to appear in the child new skills, competence in one respect or another. This task was revealed by methods of objective observation, states, snapshot experiment (Ch. Darwin, W. Preyer, A. Gesell). Later, there was a question of organizing, streamlining FACTS, identify some general laws of mental development. The solution to this problem is connected with the names of S. Hall (the theory of recapitulation), A. Gesell (maturation theory), L. Theremin (normative tradition of studying children).
In 1920’s–1930’s externally observable behavior of the child was the main object of study from the standpoint of classical behaviorism. It was considered important to establish the reaction of children of different ages and adults to identical stimuli, describe the differences in the response to the external environment. Researchers became more interested about the factors and conditions of the driving forces of development. The desire to penetrate the essence of the child's development was realized in the transition to a comparative study of psychological development techniques in health and disease, methods of cross – cultural studies, experimental – genetic research led to the creation of a number of theories – S. Freud, A. Wallon, E. Erickson et al.
In domestic psychology the main tasks of child psychology were identified by L. Vygotsky (1896–1934). In the work "The problem of age", he pointed out the need to study the characteristics of each age, the main types of normal and abnormal development of the structure and dynamics of child development in their diversity.
Theoretical problems of developmental psychology:
The value of psychology is important in theoretical terms. Remember that almost all the great scientists who have left their mark in science, and the issues involved in developmental psychology. The study of child psychology – the key to understanding the psychology of an adult. L. Vygotsky assigned child psychology a fundamental role in solving the problem of establishment of "new" psychology, emphasizing that "the only correct way – to go to the study of the psyche from a child to an adult." The way of transformation of psychology – "from the narrative and descriptive, fragmentary psychology into scientific – explanatory, summarizing the system of knowledge about human behavior, the mechanisms of movement and development, about the educational management of process of his development, the formation and growth."
The practical importance of psychology is primarily due to the scientific elaboration of questions about the normative development of a healthy child, a typical age – related problems, the ways and means to solve them, stages of becoming a full – fledged adult individual, a citizen, a professional, a parent.
Practical tasks of developmental psychology:
1.2 The link of developmental psychology with other branches of psychology
The study of the transformation of mental processes in children serves as a special method of learning the mental mechanisms – genetic method. However, the subject of genetic psychology is not the same with that in psychology. The focus of genetic psychology – the development of mental processes as such; for developmental psychology a growing person is important.
Developmental psychology and educational psychology have a lot in common, especially in its historical development. The real unity of educational and developmental psychology can be explained by a general object of the study – a growing and changing person in the ontogeny. But in educational psychology in the foreground – training and education of the subject in the process of targeting teachers, and psychology are interested in how development takes place in a variety of socio–cultural situations. human mental development takes place within the various social communities: family, peer group in the yard or in the kindergarten, in the classroom. As a subject of communication and interpersonal relationships, developing the individual part is the subject of social psychology. The ratio of the typical and individual, general and original, normal and abnormal, deviant series development creates a shared area psychology and comparative psychology, differential, abnormal psychology and clinical psychology. Psychology has varied due to the wide range of fields of science and culture. It is based on the field of natural sciences, medicine, knowledge, pedagogy, ethnography, sociology, gerontology, cultural studies, art history, linguistics, logic, literature and other fields of science. And, in turn, psychology, revealing patterns of the age of formation of the psyche, making them common property.
Control questions