working with children having special problems, they are employed in hospitals as clinical psychologists, in corporate organisations in the HRD and advertising departments, in sports directorates, in the development sector and in IT industry. B RANCHES OF P SYCHOLOGY Various fields of specialisation in psychology have emerged over the years. Some of these are discussed in this section. Cognitive Psychology investigates mental processes involved in acquisition, storage, manipulation, and transformation of information received from the environment along with its use and communication.
The major cognitive processes are attention, perception, memory, reasoning, problem solving, decision-making and language. You will be studying these topics later in this textbook. In order to study these cognitive processes, psychologists conduct experiments in laboratory settings. Some of them also follow an ecological approach, i.e.
an approach which focuses on the environmental factors, to study cognitive processes in a natural setting. Cognitive psychologists often collaborate with neuroscientists and computer scientists. Biological Psychology focuses on the relationship between behaviour and the physical system, including the brain and the rest of the nervous system, the immune system, and genetics. Biological psychologists often collaborate with neuroscientists, zoologists, and anthropologists.
Neuropsychology has emerged as a field of research where psychologists and neuroscientists are working together. Researchers are studying the role of neurotransmitters or chemical substances which are responsible for neural communication in different areas of the brain and therefore in associated mental functions. They do their research on people with normal functioning brain as well as on people with damaged brain by following advanced technologies like EEG, PET and fMRI, etc. about which you will study later.
Developmental Psychology studies the physical, social and psychological changes that occur at different ages and stages over a life-span, from conception to old age. The primary concern of developmental psychologists is how we become what we are. For many years the major emphasis was on child and adolescent development. However today an increasing number of developmental psychologists show strong interest in adult development and ageing.
They focus on the biological, socio-cultural and environmental factors that influence psychological characteristics such as intelligence, cognition, emotion,