Developmental psychology is concerned with the factors that affect physical, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social development across the lifespan. The debate between the relative contributions of innate and experiential factors in development is studied from infancy through aging in the context of experiments examining behaviour and/or physiological indices.

Students enrolled in the developmental research area will take a course in general development (3GG3) in addition to specialized courses in areas such as infancy (3HH3), cognitive development (3II3), reading and language development (3U03, 3UU3), social-emotional development (3JJ3), child language acquisition (3C03), psychopathologies of childhood (3B03), and language disorders in childhood (4C03). Throughout these courses, library research, experimental methodology, laboratory research, communication, and critical thinking skills will be emphasized (3EE3, 3LL3, 3V03). Students who wish to pursue post-graduate studies should consider completing a course with a strong research component (4QQ3, 4D06, 4DD6, 4D09). This research area provides excellent training for graduate school, research positions, and professional disciplines such as medicine, nursing, teaching, and speech pathology

For Graduate Students

We offer state-of-the-art facilities in laboratories studying Development from several different perspectives. Research spans areas such as development of auditory perception and the acquisition of music and language, perceptual abilities of normal infants and the consequences of deprivation, development of reading fluency in childhood, origins and developmental course of extreme childhood shyness and social withdrawal, development of attention and study of autism, effects of aging on vision and attention, as well as studies of the development of aggression and bullying.