Required Texts Sroufe, L. A., R. G. Cooper, and G. B. DeHart. Its Nature and Course. This videotape is necessary for completing the Lesson Six written assignment. These are the kinds of questions addressed in the study of child development. In a broad sense, the field is concerned with the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional changes that occur during childhood.
Developmental psychologists seek to explain human behavior by studying people at different ages.
They assume that development is systematic, and that principles governing physical and psychological change can be discovered through scientific investigation. Developmentalists have several major goals. First, they wish to describe how children behave, think, and feel at various ages. They also try to explain the processes underlying developmental shifts. It is not enough, for example, to discover that infants and preschoolers have different styles of play or different intellectual abilities.