A branch of psychology which studies how people change physically, cognitively and socially over the entire life span is known as :

Question

Accepted Answer

Developmental psychology is the branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the lifespan. This aligns perfectly with the question's description. Developmental psychologists examine changes from infancy through old age, covering topics like motor skills, problem-solving abilities, moral understanding, language acquisition, social behavior, personality, emotional development, and identity formation. Therefore, Option 3 is the correct answer because it directly addresses the core focus of the question.

Now, let's explain why the other options are incorrect:

1.  **Clinical psychology:** Clinical psychology focuses on understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and promoting subjective well-being and personal development. While clinical psychologists might work with individuals across the lifespan, their primary focus is on mental health disorders and treatment, not the broad spectrum of typical development.

2.  **Counselling psychology:** Counselling psychology focuses on facilitating personal and interpersonal functioning across the lifespan. It pays particular attention to emotional, social, vocational, educational, health-related, developmental, and organizational concerns. While there is overlap with developmental psychology, counselling psychology is more focused on addressing specific problems and promoting well-being rather than studying the entire developmental process.

3.  **Experimental psychology:** Experimental psychology uses scientific methods to investigate basic psychological processes such as learning, memory, sensation, perception, cognition, motivation, and emotion. While experimental methods can be used *within* developmental psychology to study these processes across the lifespan, experimental psychology itself is not a specific branch dedicated to studying lifespan development.