|thumb|200px|[[Ганс Бальдунг. Три возраста и смерть. 1540—1543. Музей Прадо. Мадрид]]
'''Психология развития''' — отрасль психологии, изучающая психологические изменения человека по мере взросления. Она состоит из трех подотраслей: геронтопсихологии, детской психологии, пре- и перинатальной психологии.

== Теории развития ==
* Ранние теории: преформизм, конформизм Локк и Руссо
* Теория созревания Гезелла
* Этологические и эволюционные теории Дарвина, Лоренца и Тинбергена
* Теории привязанности — Боулби и Эйнсуорт
* Философия образования Монтессори
* Теория организма и сравнительная теория Вернера
* Теория когнитивного развития Пиаже
* Стадии нравственного развития по Колбергу
* Теории научения: Павлов, Уотсон, Скиннер
* Теория социального научения Бандуры
* Культурно-историческая теория Выготского и Лурии
* Психоанализ Зигмунда Фрейда
* Теории отделения-индивидуации Малера
* Восемь стадий жизни Эриксона
* Теория аутизма Беттельгейма
* Теория детских переживаний Шахтеля
* Теория зрелости Юнга
* Теория развития языка Хомского
* Гуманистическая психология

Взято из книги: У. Крейн, «Теории развития», 2002
(см. [http://www.ethology.ru/library/?id=190 отрывок из книги])

== См. также ==
* Развитие

'''Developmental psychology''', also known as '''human development''which can help with psychosocial', is the scientific study of progressive psychological changes that occur in moral understanding, and identity formation.

Developmental psychologists investigate key questions, such as whether children are qualitatively different from adults or simply lack the experience that adults draw upon. Two   important issues concern the nature of development. One concerns whether development occurs through the gradual accumulation of knowledge or through shifts from one stage of thinking to another. The other concerns whether children are born with innate knowledge or figure things out through experience. A third significant area of research examines social contexts that affect development. 

Developmental psychology informs several applied fields, including: social psychology, cognitive psychology, cognitive development, ecological psychology and comparative psychology.

== Theory ==
Many theoretical perspectives attempt to explain development; among the most prominent are: Stage Theory, Lev Vygotsky's Social Contextualism (and its heirs Cultural Theory of Development of Michael Cole, and the Ecological Systems Theory of Urie Bronfenbrenner), Albert Bandura's Social learning theory and the information processing framework employed by cognitive psychology.

To a lesser extent, historical theories continue to provide a basis for additional research. Among them are stages of psychosocial development and stages in moral reasoning.  Human development is also an area of study in education. One of the pioneers in defining the stages of human development was Robert J. Havighurst. His major contribution was defining the developmental tasks for six basic age groups.

=== Role of experience ===

A significant question in developmental psychology is the relationship between innateness and environmental influence in regard to any particular aspect of development. This is often referred to as "nativism versus empiricism. A nativist account of development would argue that the processes in question are innate, that is, they are specified by the organism's genes. An empiricist perspective would argue that those processes are acquired in interaction with the environment. Today developmental psychologists rarely take such extreme positions with regard to most aspects of development; rather they investigate, among many other things, the relationship between innate and environmental influences. One of the ways in which this relationship has been explored in recent years is through the emerging field of evolutionary developmental psychology.

One  where this innateness debate has been prominently portrayed is in research on module suited for learning language, often called the language acquisition device.

The empiricist position on the issue of language acquisition suggests that the language input does provide the necessary information required for learning the structure of language and that infants acquire language through a process of statistical learning. From this perspective, language can be acquired via general learning methods that also apply to other aspects of development, such as perceptual learning. There is a great deal of evidence for components of both the nativist and empiricist position, and this is a hotly debated research topic in developmental psychology.

On the other hand, Chomsky's critique of a specific empiricist position on this issue, radical behaviorist Burrhus Frederic Skinner's ''Verbal Behavior'' written in 1957, is widely considered among developmental psychologists to have sparked the decline in influence of behaviorism and signaled the beginning of the cognitive revolution in psychology.

=== Mechanisms of development ===
Developmental psychology is concerned not only with describing the characteristics of psychological change over time, but also seeks to explain the principles and internal workings underlying these changes. Understanding these factors is aided by the use of models. Developmental models are often computational, but they do not necessarily need to be. A model must simply account for the means by which a process takes place. This is sometimes done in reference to changes in the connectionist (neural network), or dynamical systems models to explain the mechanisms of development.

== History of developmental psychology ==
The modern form of developmental psychology has its roots in the rich psychological tradition represented by Tabari,<ref name=Amber>Amber Haque (2004), "Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists", ''Journal of Religion and Health'' '''43''' (4): 357-377 [361]</ref> Rhazes,<ref name=Tschanz>David W. Tschanz, MSPH, PhD (August 2003). "Arab Roots of European Medicine", ''Heart Views'' '''4''' (2).</ref> Alhazen,<ref name=Steffens>Bradley Steffens (2006), ''Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist'', Chapter 5, Morgan Reynolds Publishing, ISBN 1599350246.</ref> and Descartes. William Shakespeare had his melancholy character ''Jacques'' (in As You Like It) articulate the seven ages of man: these included three stages of childhood and four of adulthood. In the mid-eighteenth century Jean Jacques Rousseau described three stages of childhood: ''infans'' (infancy), ''puer'' (childhood) and ''adolescence'' in ''Emile: Or, On Education''. Rousseau's ideas were taken up strongly by educators at the time. 

In the late nineteenth century, psychologists familiar with the Darwin began seeking an evolutionary description of psychological development; prominent here was G. Stanley Hall, who attempted to correlate ages of childhood with previous ages of mankind.

A more scientific approach was initiated by psychosexual stages. Later, Piaget's later-described stages of childhood, were first presented in Steiner's 1911 essay ''The Education of the Child''. By the early to mid-twentieth century, the work of Piaget, mentioned above, had established a strong empirical tradition in the field.

===Parenting===

In Western developed societies, mothers (and women generally) were emphasized to the exclusion of other caregivers, particularly as the traditional role of the father was more the breadwinner, and less the direct caregiver of an infant, he has been traditionally viewed as impacting an infant indirectly through interactions with the mother of the child.

The emphasis of study has shifted to the primary caregiver (regardless of gender or biological relation), as well as all persons directly or indirectly influencing the child (the family system). The roles of the mother and father are more significant than first thought as we moved into the concept of primary caregiver.

Affirming a role for fathers, studies have shown that children as young as 15 months benefit significantly from substantial engagement with their father.<ref name = "aredos">[http://www.ericdigests.org/2004-3/role.html Fathers' Role in Children's Academic Achievement and Early Literacy. ERIC Digest<!--Bot-generated title-->]</ref><ref>"Children with active, involved fathers have better social skills, are healthier, and do better in school", according to Duane Wilson, the Proud Fathers, Proud Parents program coordinator for the Michigan Department of Human Services (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2125328669291708941 2:57)</ref> In particular, a study in the U.S.A. and New Zealand found the presence of the natural father was the most significant factor in reducing rates of early sexual activity and rates of teenage pregnancy in girls.<ref>Bruce J. Ellis, Child Development May/June 2003, 74:3, pp. 801-821</ref> Covariate factors used included early conduct problems, maternal age at first childbirth, race, maternal education, father's occupational status, family living standards, family life stress, early mother-child interaction, measures of psychosocial adjustment and educational achievement, school qualifications, mood disorder, anxiety disorder, suicide attempts, violent offending, and conduct disorder. Further research has found fathers have an impact on child academic performance, including involved nonresident fathers.<ref name = "aredos"/> However, father absence is associated with a range of negative outcomes for children, including child and later criminal behavior.<ref>Rebekah Levine Coley and Bethany L. Medeiros, Reciprocal Longitudinal Relations Between Nonresident Father Involvement and Adolescent Delinquency, ''Child Development'', 78:1, pp. 132-147, Jan 2007</ref>

==Criticisms==
Many critics of developmental psychology have noted that studies in the field often fail to account for the effects of genetics. In the book The Nurture Assumption, Judith Harris argues that situational factors in the family environment may not satisfactorily explain observed variation of many traits (such as adult IQ and the Big Five personality factors) in the general population of the United States; rather, Harris suggests that either peer groups or random environmental factors (i.e., those that are independent of family upbringing and socioeconomic status of origin, but not independent of genetics) are more important than family environmental effects <ref> http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:etWy56SPQQYJ:home.att.net/~xchar/tna. Website 
for "The Nurture Assumption." </ref> <ref>[http://home.att.net/~xchar/tna/edge2006.htm THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2006 — P6<!--Bot-generated title-->]</ref>
The book was a 1999 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

==Stages of development==

The prenatal development of human beings is viewed in three separate stages:

#Germinal (conception through week 2)
#Embryonic (weeks 3 through 8)
#Fetal (week 9 through birth)

These stages are not the same as the trimesters of a woman's pregnancy. 

The germinal stage begins when a sperm penetrates an egg in the act of conception (normally the result of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman).  At this point a zygote is formed. Through the process of mitosis  the cells divide and double. 

The embryonic stage occurs once the zygote has firmly implanted itself into the uterine wall. It is in this stage that the vital organs are formed, and while the external body is still extremely dissimilar from an adult human, some features such as eyes and arms, and eventually ears and feet become recognizable.

The fetal period is when the brain most substantially forms, becoming more and more complex over the last few months. 

During pregnancy the risk to the developing child from stress on the mother, nutrition and the age of the mother are quite acute.

thumb|right|A baby in its mother's womb, viewed in a sonogram

Three methods of determining fetal defects and health include the ultrasound, amniocentesis, and chorionic villus sampling. 

Ultrasound uses sound waves and a computer monitor, and is non-invasive, thus minimizing potential harm to fetus and mother. Unfortunately its ability to determine potential defect is also far less comprehensive than more risky methods.

Chorionic villus sampling is a form of prenatal diagnosis to determine genetic abnormalities in the fetus. It entails getting a sample of the chorionic villus (placental tissue) and testing it. It is generally carried out only on pregnant women over the age of 35 and those who have a higher risk of Down syndrome and other chromosomal conditions.

The advantage of CVS is that it can be carried out at 10-12 weeks of pregnancy, earlier than amniocentesis (which is carried out at 15-18 weeks). However, it is more risky than amniocentesis, with a 1 in 100 to 200 risk that it will cause a miscarriage.

medical procedure used for prenatal diagnosis, in which a small amount of amniotic fluid is extracted from the amnion around a developing fetus. It is usually offered when there may be an increased risk for genetic conditions (i.e. Down syndrome, sickle-cell disease, cystic fibrosis, etc) in the pregnancy. Amniocentesis done in the second trimester is often said to have a risk of fetal death between about 1 in 400 and 1 in 200. Often, genetic counseling is done before amniocentesis or other types of genetic testing are offered.

Although difficult, some methods of treating fetal disorders have been developed, both surgical and drug based. Genetic testing prior to pregnancy is also increasingly available.

===Infancy===
From birth until the onset of speech, the child is referred to as an infant. Developmental psychologists vary widely in their assessment of infant psychology, and the influence the outside world has upon it, but certain aspects are relatively clear. 

While no agreement has yet been reached regarding the level of stimulation an infant requires, we are well aware that a normal level of stimulation is very important, and that a lack of stimulation and affection can result in retardation and a host of other developmental and social disorders. Some feel that classical music, particularly Mozart is good for an infant's mind. While some tentative research has shown it to be helpful to older children, no conclusive evidence is available involving infants.

The majority of an infant's time is spent in sleep. At first this sleep is evenly spread throughout the day and night, but after a couple of months, infants generally become diurnal.

Infants can be seen to have 6 states, grouped into pairs:
*quiet sleep and active sleep (REM occurs)
*quiet waking, and active waking
*fussing and crying

Infants respond to stimuli differently when in these different states. Habituation is frequently used in testing psychological phenomenon. Both infants and adults look less and less as a result of consistent exposure to a particular stimulus. The amount of time spent looking to a presented alternate stimulus (after habituation to the initial stimulus) is indicative of the strength of the remembered percept of the previous stimulus, or dishabituation. 

Habituation is used to discover the resolution of perceptual systems, for example, by habituating a subject to one stimulus, and then observing responses to similar ones, one can detect the smallest degree of difference that is detectable by the subject. 

Infants have a wide variety of reflexes, some of which are permanent (blinking, gagging), and others transient in nature. Some with obvious purposes, some are clearly vestigial and some do not have obvious purposes. Primitive reflexes reappear in adults under certain conditions. Namely, neurological conditions like infantile reflexes includes:

*Moro reflex or startle reflex:
*#Startle
*#spreading out the adduction)
*#unspreading the arms (abduction)
*#Crying (usually)
*Tonic neck reflex or fencer's reflex
*Rooting reflex, sucking reflex, suckling reflex: can be initiated by scratching the infant's cheek; the reaction is pursing of the lips for sucking.
*Stepping reflex, step-up reflex: can be initiated if you support the infant upright from its armpits below a given surface so the baby lifts its foot and steps up on the surface (like climbing a stair).
*Grasp reflex: can be initiated by scratching the infant's palm.
*Parachute reflex: the infant is suspended by the trunk and suddenly lowered as if falling for an instant. The child spontaneously throws out the arms as a protective mechanism. The parachute reflex appears before the onset of walking.
*Plantar reflex or Babinski reflex: a finger is stroked firmly down the outer edge of the baby's sole; the toes spread and extend out.

Infants have significantly worse vision than older children. Infant sight, blurry in early stages, improves over time. Infants less than 2 months old are thought to be color blind. 

Hearing is well-developed prior to birth, however, and a preference for the mother's heartbeat is well established. Infants are fairly good at detecting the direction from which a sound comes, and by 18 months their hearing ability is approximately equal to that of adults.

Smell and taste are present, with infants having been shown to prefer the smell and taste of a banana, while rejecting the taste of shrimp. There is good evidence for infants preferring the smell of their mother to that of others.

Infants have a fully developed sense of touch at birth, and the myth believed by some doctors even today that infants feel no pain is inaccurate. Doctors are slowly becoming aware of the need for pain prevention for newborns.

Piaget felt that there were several sensorimotor stages within his broader Theory of cognitive development.

*The first sub-stage occurs from birth to six weeks and is associated primarily with the development of reflexes. Three primary reflexes are described by Piaget: sucking of objects in the mouth, following moving or interesting objects with the eyes, and closing of the hand when an object makes contact with the palm (palmar grasp). Over these first six weeks of life, these reflexes begin to become voluntary actions; for example, the palmar reflex becomes intentional grasping. (Gruber and Vaneche, 1977<ref>*Piaget, J.  (1977). "The essential Piaget" ed by Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Voneche Gruber, New York: Basic Books</ref>).
*The second sub-stage occurs from six weeks to four months and is associated primarily with the development of habits. Primary circular reactions or repeating of an action involving only ones own body begin. An example of this type of reaction would involve something like an infant repeating the motion of passing their hand before their face. Also at this phase, passive reactions, caused by classical or operant conditioning, can begin (Gruber et al., 1977).
*The third sub-stage occurs from four to nine months and is associated primarily with the development of coordination between vision and prehension. Three new abilities occur at this stage: intentional grasping for a desired object, secondary circular reactions, and differentiations between ends and means. At this stage, infants will intentionally grasp the air in the direction of a desired object, often to the amusement of friends and family. Secondary circular reactions, or the repetition of an action involving an external object occur begin; for example, moving a switch to turn on a light repeatedly. The differentiation between means also occurs. This is perhaps one of the most important stages of a child's growth as it signifies the dawn of logic (Gruber et al., 1977). Towards the late part of this sub-stage infants begin to have a sense of object permanence, passing the A-not-B error test. 
*The fourth sub-stage occurs from nine to twelve months and is associated primarily with the development of logic and the coordination between means and ends. This is an extremely important stage of development, holding what Piaget calls the "first proper intelligence." Also, this stage marks the beginning of goal orientation, the deliberate planning of steps to meet an objective (Gruber et al. 1977). 
*The fifth sub-stage occurs from twelve to eighteen months and is associated primarily with the discovery of new means to meet goals. Piaget describes the child at this juncture as the "young scientist," conducting pseudo-experiments to discover new methods of meeting challenges (Gruber et al. 1977).
*The sixth sub-stage is associated primarily with the beginnings of insight, or true creativity. This marks the passage into the preoperational stage.

thumb|200px|Special methods are required to study infant behavior.

When studying infants, the habituation methodology is an example of a method often used to assess their performance. This method allows researchers to obtain information about what types of stimuli an infant is able to discriminate. In this paradigm, infants are habituated to a particular stimulus and are then tested using different stimuli to evaluate discrimination. The critical measure in habituation is the infants' level of interest. Typically, infants prefer stimuli that are novel relative to those they have encountered previously. Several methods are used to measure infants' preference. These include the high-amplitude sucking procedure, in which infants suck on a pacifier more or less depending on their level of interest, the conditioned foot-kick procedure, in which infants move their legs to indicate preference, and the head-turn preference procedure, in which the infant's level of interest is measured by the amount of time spent looking in a particular direction. A key feature of all these methods is that, in each situation, the infant controls the stimuli being presented. This gives researchers a means of measuring discrimination. If an infant is able to discriminate between the habituated stimulus and a novel stimulus, they will show a preference for the novel stimulus. If, however, the infant cannot discriminate between the two stimuli, they will not show a preference for one over the other.