Centre for Developmental Psychology

Centre Description

The Centre for Developmental Psychology, established by the Psychology Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2001, is a state-of-the-art research facility for studies on development across the lifespan with particular emphasis on childhood and adolescence.

Peers enjoy playing together.	Siblings accompany each other in learning and playing.

Mission

The Centre for Developmental Psychology aims to facilitate basic and applied research on both social and cognitive development with infants, children, and adolescents, as well as adults. The Centre houses separate spaces for testing and observations, specially designed to be child-friendly. A pleasant play environment invites children to explore and gives parents a relaxing atmosphere in which everyone can feel comfortable. This, combined with sophisticated observational and recording equipment, offers researchers an ideal place in which to carry out a variety of developmental research studies.

Assessments in the Developmental Centre. The Developmental Centre provides an excellent place for assessing children's abilities and observing children's behavior.

Research

General research objectives of the Centre include:

• Conducting basic behavioral, cognitive, and neuropsychological research on infants, children, and adolescents, as well as adults
  
• Applying developmental research to educational problems and family systems
  
• Assessing a wide range of cognitive, social, and behavioral skills in infancy, childhood, and adolescence
  
• Forming partnerships with institutions in Hong Kong, mainland China, and overseas to promote cross-cultural and cross-institutional developmental research.

Research activites currently underway in the Centre include:

• Encouraging and evaluating the effects of shared parent-child reading to stimulate emergent literacy in Hong Kong kindergartners, including those with hearing or language impairments
  
• Identifying markers of reading and reading disability in primary school children in Hong Kong and Beijing
  
• Tracking how early language skills in infants from Hong Kong and Beijing predict subsequent language and reading

	The Joys of Parent-child reading: Parent-child reading is an ideal context for children's language development because it offers both social and contextual support for language development. For more information, go to www.psy.cuhk.edu.hk/~qefproject/

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