Applied Psychology: Applying Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology and More To The Real World: An Introductory Series

By Connor Whiteley

Psychologists apply theory to real world problems. Psychologists manage to improve lives, save people and achieve incredible things by applying psychology to the world.

But how?

This engaging, passionate and fascinating book explains the psychological theory behind a wide range of interesting areas and how psychologists apply the theory to problems to create impressive solutions.

By the end of this great book, you'll know:

• How applied psychology works?
• How psychological theory applies to language disorders?
• How psychology decreases work-related stress?
• How psychology counters misinformation, misogyny and conspiracy theories?
• And many more fascinating topics.

If you're looking for an easy-to-understand, passionate, engaging guide to applied psychology then this is the book for you.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: CGD Publishing
• Release date: Apr 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798223493419

Connor Whiteley

Hello, I'm Connor Whiteley, I am an 18-year-old who loves to write creatively, and I wrote my Brownsea trilogy when I was 14 years old after I went to Brownsea Island on a scout camp. At the camp, I started to think about how all the broken tiles and pottery got there and somehow a trilogy got created.Moreover, I love writing fantasy and sci-fi novels because you’re only limited by your imagination.In addition, I'm was an Explorer Scout and I love camping, sailing and other outdoor activities as well as cooking.Furthermore, I do quite a bit of charity work as well. For example: in early 2018 I was a part of a youth panel which was involved in creating a report with research to try and get government funding for organised youth groups and through this panel. I was invited to Prince Charles’ 70th birthday party and how some of us got in the royal photograph.Finally, I am going to university and I hope to get my doctorate in clinical psychology in a few years.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Let’s face it.

As psychology students and professionals, we all know a lot of things that are fascinating, really interesting and seriously theoretical. Then we all worry how the hell is this useful in real life? Or we at least wonder how would we apply this knowledge to a real-world problem.

That’s where applied psychology and this book comes in.

What Is Applied Psychology And What Will This Book Cover?

Applied psychology is a truly fascinating area of psychology that exclusively focuses on how we, as current or future psychologists, take the theory that we’ve learnt and apply it to real life problems so we can improve lives and make a real impact on people.

For example, in the business psychology section of the book, we look at the theories surrounding work-related stress and see how those great theories are applied to solutions and interventions that improve people’s lives.

I always say that psychology has the power to improve the world, decrease distress and give people a new chance at life, and it is this book and the knowledge within that truly proves that.

In addition, applied psychology uses The Path Model at its very basic core. This model explains how a psychologist would apply psychology in the real world from first identifying the problem, this involves moving from a problem to a problem-definition so you understand exactly what you need to do, to an analysis of the problem, then testing the solution to the problem and then helping the organization implement it.

Furthermore, when looking at a problem, a psychologist wouldn’t only look at the problem itself, but they would look at why is it a problem and for who, what the potential causes and what are the key aspects of the problem that need to be addressed?

That is how psychology is applied in its most basic form, but this book goes way beyond that.

By investigating fascinating theories about language development, work-related stress, sexism and extremism, misinformation and so much more, this book really explores in-depth a wide breath and depth of psychological topics, so you can understand at a deep level why psychology is powerful and why it can be applied to so much more than you ever thought possible.

Who Is This Book For?

Like all of my books, this is written for psychology students and psychology professionals that want to understand applied psychology more. Maybe you aren’t familiar with sport psychology, misinformation or one of the many other topics that we explore in this book. That’s okay.

This book is designed to feature and draw on a lot of areas of psychology so there is something for everyone in this book.

Moreover, this book is written in a fun, conversational and easy-to-understand tone so this is as far from a boring psychology textbook as you can get. Although, it is referred and completely fact-based so this makes for wonderful reading experience you’ll enjoy and not dread.

If you’re looking for an engaging book to tell you about applied psychology then definitely keep reading. You won’t regret it.

Who Am I?

Personally, I always love to know who the author is of the nonfiction I read so I know the information is coming from a good source. In case you’re like me, I’m Connor Whiteley, the internationally bestselling author of over 40 psychology books.

In addition, I am the host of The Psychology World Podcast, a weekly show exploring a new psychology topic each week and delivering the latest psychology news. Available on all major podcast apps and YouTube.

Finally, I am a psychology graduate studying a Clinical Psychology Masters at the University of Kent, England.

Now that we know more about each other, let’s start exploring the brilliant world of applied psychology.

PART ONE:

APPLYING DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY THEORY TO LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

WHAT IS ORAL LANGUAGE AND WHO HAS DIFFICULTIES?

To help kick off the first section of the book, I really want us to investigate the psychological theory behind speech development and how we can apply this knowledge to help children with language difficulties through interventions.

When it comes to language, there are two main types you need to understand. Firstly, there’s structural language and this can be seen as the nuts and bolts of language, because it includes the words, sentences, grammatical aspects and more.

Secondly, you have social communication involving the social aspects of a language and how a person uses it for social purposes.

Interestingly, a person can be good at one aspect of language but bad at another language type, and the same goes for a person’s language production and language comprehension.

Moreover, I know a lot of readers are psychology students and professionals so you would have done developmental psychology at some point at university, so just a reminder there are four important aspects of language. These are:

Phonology/ phonetics- the sound of the language

Semantics- the system of decontextualized meaning

Lexical item- words

Grammar

Also, what we’re really interested in applied psychology is the milestones of each of these four areas so we can indict if a child has language difficulties. For instance, by age 1, a child should have reached the phonology milestone of canonical babbling and between the age of 3 and 4, a child’s phonological awareness should increase.

When it comes to their lexicon, the first word should be produced around the age of 1 and a child should have reached their 500 words productive vocabulary after 2.5 years. In other words, they should know 500 words.

When it comes to grammar, a child should start using their first word combinations around the age of one and a half, and they should start producing complex utterances, like multiclause sentences, between the ages of 3 and 4.

Finally, when it comes to communication milestones, a child’s intentional communication begins a few months before their first birthday and their narrative skills develop between the ages of 3 and 4.

That’s a quick overview of the major milestones in a child’s language development.

Additionally, in contrast to popular lay theories that I’ve heard from non-language people over the years, as supported by Hoff (2009), language development for all children is down to both child-internal and environment factors.

How Language and Communication Is Impacted In Neurodevelopmental Conditions?

Child-internal factors are easy to understand in children with neurodevelopmental conditions, because these conditions can make it difficult to learn a structured language and/ or social communication. Since if we remember the beginning of the chapter, a child can be good at one type of language but bad in another.

Some of these Developmental Language Disorders or Specific Language Impairments making language hard to learn includes:

Autism Spectrum Conditions- language isn’t always effected by these conditions because of the wide variations in an autistic person’s ability so some autistic people are only minimally impacted but others are non-verbal.

Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder

Some children with Fragile X

Down Syndrome

For children with neurodevelopmental conditions, environmental interventions do lead to improvements in language or communication, which is why we’ll focus on it in the book. However, this improvement does depend on the intervention itself, the child, what aspect of language is targeted, the dosage of the interventions amongst other factors.

It isn’t clear-cut but thankfully because of great researchers we do have a lot of effective tools to use to help improve language in children, and we’ll only get better and more effective tools over time.

Types Of Language Interventions

When it comes to psychological interventions for language problems, there are three levels of enhancement that we can use to help children.

For instance, Tier 1 interventions are whole-classroom-focused strategies that teachers use to promote language development to everyone. These are really good opportunities for oral language learning for everyone, but as generally effective for reading or comprehension.

Tier 2 interventions are small group interventions, like the NELT that we’ll look at later on.

Then Tier 3 interventions are the most specific, most intensive and the least number of children will need these interventions. Also, Tier 3 interventions are usually directly or indirectly conducted with a Speech and Language Therapist but this does very much depend on the country and resources. As well as sometimes these resources are so stretched, so underfunded, so crippled that some children only get 6 hours of speech and language therapy a year.

That is just disgraceful and more money should be going into these services immediately.

We’ll look at these interventions in a lot more depth in the coming chapters.

How Does Someone Get Qualified To Become A Speech And Language Therapist?

Personally, I can attest that these therapists are amazing and do the works of the Gods because I needed them when I was very young, and without them I wouldn’t have been able to talk. And not only talk and speak but go on to become an audiobook narrator and podcaster.

So thank you.

Therefore, in case you want to become one of these amazing people, this is the typical pathway you would need to take in the UK.

Firstly, you would need an undergraduate degree in a science, language or psychology at least at a 2:1 level then you would go on to study Speech And Language Therapy at Masters Level (either a PGDip or MSC) with this lasting two years.

Now the reason why I’m mentioning this in a psychology book is because a lot of psychology students go on to do this career. As well as in addition to the normal student support the UK Government gives you (at the time of writing), you also get a grant of at least £5,000 a year that isn’t means-tested or repayable.

That’s brilliant.

If you wanted to find out more, you can find more information from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy.

Finally, it’s worth noting that language difficulties are very hard to understand in everyone. Since there is a lot of variability in typically-developing children too, so just because a child is struggling with language development, it doesn’t mean that they always have a neurodevelopmental condition.

So what other reasons could cause these language difficulties?

Well, let’s turn over the page and find out.

WHY DOES VARIABILITY IN LANGUAGE MATTER?

In the last chapter we were introduced to the topic of language development but I also revealed that even amongst typically-developing children that there was a massive amount of variability in terms of language development.

What does this matter and why do we care?

The main reason why we need to care about language development is because a child’s oral language skills, like their vocabulary, syntax, pragmatics, phonological awareness as well as narrative, are all immensely predictive of their ability to read and their general school success. (Dickinson & Tabors, 2001; Scarborough, 2001; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998; Snow, 1999; Stanovich, 1986; Storch & Whitehurst, 2001; Walker, Greenwood, Hart & Carta, 1994)

In addition, research consistently shows that variation in oral language skills link to children’s varied performance across a wide range of subjects. For instance literacy (Law, Todd, Clark, Mroz & Carr, 2013) and more surprisingly, maths (Durkin et al., 2013; Pace et al., 2019; Fuchs et al., 2006).

Overall, oral language levels in primary school is the biggest predictor of secondary school maths because children need language to teach and do maths. This is even more important when we realise that a hell of a lot of math questions are written in words.

In other words, if you don’t know how to read a question, you cannot do maths at all.

And yet, this has wider applications too, because oral language impacts science, geography, history and more. All because children learn by hearing, reading and being taught through language and children need to understand what question is being asked of them.

All of us reading this book have gone through exams at some point in life and we all know that questions are written in terms of explain, describe, discuss, evaluate and more. You cannot answer these questions if you don’t know what those words mean.

As well as children do learn better through peer discussions (see Tenenbaum et al., 2019, for a review). Again, if you cannot talk or understand what is being said, this cannot happen.

Personally, it is these findings that really hit home and remind us and truly helps me to understand why this is such a critical topic. Since my speech and language therapy allowed me to understand books, literature and school so I could go on to university, write my books and learn everything I possibly can about what I’m interested in. I’m sure you’re similar.

This is why learning about language difficulties and finding solutions to these problems is so, so important. Not only for us, but for the children so we can give them the best possible start in life.

Why Language Development Is Critical For Social Reasons?

Another reason why language is important and why this variability matters is because if children have poor language skills at age 3 then this predicts peer victimization at age 5. As well as if a child continues to have poor language skills at age 5 then this is associated with peer victimization and the perpetrating of bullying at age 8 (Øksendal et al., 2021). The reasoning behind this is that poor language skills link to a child’s frustration at themselves and their inability to pick up on what’s said around them.

That’s partly heartbreaking but I don’t think