Research in Child Psychology
Why Studying Child Psychology is Important
- Gain insight into human nature
- Understand role that infancy, childhood, and adolescents play in
shaping who we become as adults - Use information to help parents and caretakers understand and
recognize milestones, set realistic developmental expectations, and
provide appropriate environments for child’s well-being - Identify and encourage protective factors and identify barriers to
child mental health - Prevention, treatment, and support services to promote child’s
physical, cognitive, social-emotional, behavioral and educational
development. - Address delays in development, child psychopathology
- Study origins and differences in contextual factors: Culture, sex,
gender, cohort effects
Importance of Research
- Research in child development informs ‘best practice’
- Many strong opinions, personal beliefs, influences
- Separate opinion from fact, anecdotal evidence vs scientific data
- Important and PRACTICAL implications
- Scientific knowledge is empirical: it is grounded in objective, tangible evidence that can be tested and replicated over time
- Research is always changing and growing- what may have held true previously should be revisited considering contextual factors, environmental changes, collective trauma, and technological advances
- New scientific advances allow us to study the biological/neurological underpinnings of behavior as well as psychological responses and disorders