Child pschyology Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Child pschyology - Research Paper Example d psychology mainly studies the mental and cognitive processes and other factors that combine to give meaning to how a child reacts and use that information to improve parenting, health, education, mental hygiene and other areas devoted to child benefits. Child psychology thus enables us to understand the behavior of children. To understand the child behavior we, therefore, need to consider the child and his or her environment as an arrangement of correlating variables. Viewing behavior, or in fact any set of data in its entirety, in context has been labeled by many analysts as a field (Einstein, 1933; Kohler, 1925; Lewin, 1954). Context is generally defined as the circumstances that surround a particular situation. A child’s growth and development depends on the environmental as well as personal variables that make up the context. For example, the personal variables for a class of kindergarten children may include their genders, age, nature and upbringing; whereas the environmental variables may include the aspects of the surrounding in which the adult and children interact, such as the physical characteristics of the classroom (Parke & Gauvain, 2009; Fishbein, 1984). At later stages in a child’s life these environmental factors have a much larger scope and include factors such as social interactions, gatherings and the culture in which (s)he lives. All these factors eventually have a great influence on how a child grows. The culture in which a child lives shapes up the values and beliefs which give a special meaning to the observable elements of behavior, customs and artifacts. Beneath these values and beliefs lie the foundational idea that are called shared assumptions. These assumptions influence the behavior of children and play a great role in developing their perception. The socioeconomic level of people is influenced by many factors including their family background, education, job status, and their nationality. Children rose in families with a high