Development across the lifespan

The development of an individual organism or anatomical or behavioural feature from the earliest stage to maturity.

E.g. Baltes, 1987.

- The goal of lifespan psychology is to gain knowledge about:

  1) The principles of life-long development

  2) Interindividual differeces and similarities

  3) Individual plasticity

- Development is not complete at this point in maturity

- Lifespan suggests that development is lifelong.

- Looks at the structure of lifelong development

- Looks at early and later events

Growth-maintenance-decline

- Based on a biological model of growth

- Extent of 'decline' depends on what aspect of development is being examined (i.e. biological growth and decline vs. psychosocial functioning.

- Development involves a fixed sequence of stages. It is linear, hierarchal and discontinuous.

- Each stage is qualitatively different from the prior, involving major shifts in processes of reasoning and understanding, or self-concept.

           -e.g. Piaget

Stages: Prenatal; Infancy; Childhood; Adolescence

- Development in the pre-adult period is characterised by physical growth and change, increasing cognitive abilities and social skills.

- Children are dependent with few responsibilities.

- Changes in their activities and responsibilities are sen as a result of their development.

- By the end of adulthood, we are:

       1) Biologically mature

       2) At th highest stage of our cognitive ability

       3) Socially competent

- Development in adulthood is considered 'ageing'

- Behaviour and psychosocial well-being is often considered to be the product of our childhood experiences

- But a lifespan approach emphasises the development that cognitives continues to take placr across the lifespan.

E.g. Baltes, Lindenberger & Staudinger (2006)

- Explores the developmental agenda of each age period

- Focus on the processes and mechanisms of development

- Identifies continuity and change across the lifespan.

- Adopts person-centred and function-centred approaches.

- The ontogenesis of mind and behaviour is dynamic, multi-dimensional, multifactor and nonlinear.

- All development is a product of gains and losses. You can't have gain without life.

- Successful ageing involves maximising gains and minimising losses through processes of selection, optimisation and compensation.

- In childhood, most resources are used for growth. In later life more are used for maintenance and resilience

- Lifespan psychology can track the rise and fall of various psychological factors. The intertwined and dynamic relationship between and within variables is key.

      -E.g. dependence, emotional functioning, personality, cognition. 

Example: cognition functioning across the lifespan

Bates (1997) - Emphasised the difference between mechanical (biologically-driven) and pragmatic (culture-based) intelligence. - E.g. performance on short-term memory tasks in early adulthood, while performance on vocab tests peaks in middle age.

Hartstone & Germine (2015)

- At what age are we at peak cognitive performance?

      - Reanalysis of published of performance on wide range of standardised cognitive tasks + results from 48, 537 online participants

- Considerable heterogenity found

- "Not only is there no age at which humans are performing at peak on all cognitive tasks, there may not be an age at which humans performs at peak at most cognitive tasks."

- Identifying and establishing the relevance of stages of life through adulthood is challenging.

- Social, cultural and historical factors play a key role in establishing normative development, but there is a great deal of variation.

- Subjective experience of age and development can be just as important as biological age.

- Subjective age becomes increasingly removed from actual age. A lower subjective age is usually associated with greater well being.

   - 60 year olds feel 54

   - 70 year olds feel 62

   - 80 year olds feel 70

Early adulthood (18-40)

Biology: Peak endurance, strength, perception

Social identity: Settling down: career, long-term relationship, parenthood.

Reflection: Settling life goals, vision for the future

Responsibilities: High responsibility, independence

Experience: New experiences

Middle adulthood (35-65)

Biology: Decreases in some aspects of cognition, vision and hearing problems, grey hair, wrinkles

Social identity: Settled, firm sense of identity - maintaining status quo.

Reflection: reflecting on life and achievements

Responsibilities: changing relationships with children

Experience: turning point ('over the hill')

Old age (65+)

Biology: Significat cognitive decline; changes in brain structure, but more brain activity

Social identity: activity and productivity - or decline and dependency?

Reflection: Evaluating and accepting past

Responsibilites: freedom from responsibilities liberating

Experience: Older body becomes a barrier

- Focus on the developmental of the ego identity - conscious sense of self.

- Individuals face social demands that cause emotional crisis, but mastery of these leads to competence.

- Resolution of each crisis can lead to new virtues and strengths.

- Many developmental models suggest (young) adulthood follows adolescence - somewhere in the late teens.

- Sociological worl has emphasised the importance of life events (e.g. marriage, parenthood, leaving home) for identifying the start of adulthood.

- The notion of adulthood (like childhood) is historically and culturally constructed.

- What does this mea for developmental science?

Jeffrey Jenson Arnett:

- Explored people's subjective experiences of the transition to adulthood.

- People aged 18-25 were not like adolescents and also did not seem to have reached a stable adult life.

- This led to a proposed 'new life stage': emerged adulthood.

    - Emerging adulthood is distinct from adolescence and from adulthood. It is not just a transitional phase, but a stage in it's own right.

1) Demongraphically unique: radical shift in the standard life course

2) Subjectively differnt from preceding and subsequent age periods

3) A period of identity exploration

- Demographic transitions and life events are less important in defining oneself as an adult - self-sufficiency is key

Criteria for adulthood:

1) Accepting responsbility for oneself

2) Making independent decisions

3) Becoming financially independent. 

- Identity explorations: moving towards choices about love and work, based on personal interests and preferences

- Instability: Frequent changes in terms of relationships, jobs, education and living arrangements

- Self-focus: few responsibilities and obligations to others, room for independent decision-making

- Feeling in-between: Feel like neither an adult or adolscent, 'on the way' to adulthood

- Experimentation/possibilities - regardless of current situation, life will turn out oka, and ideal adult life will be achieved, optimism.

Arnett (2007)

- Quarter-life crisis? - Well-being rises steadily from late teens to mid-20s, increased happiness and decreased steadiness.

- Self-indulgent and materialistic? - delaying adult responsibilties in order to spend time and money on self or self-focused in ordr to shapre one's development, explore life and prepare educationally and occupationally.

- Don't want to grow up? - Historically, people were often married by 25, in a career for life, had kids. Change driven by economic shifts and the importance of higher education for careers.

Hendry and Kleop (2007)

- Featurs of emerging adulthood could be applied to other stages of life.

- Limited to specifi cultures, socio-economic situations and historical period, and will therefore become outdated. So, does it advance our understanding of human developments.

- Some say development is domain specific, flexible, non-linear and reversible, so a stage model doesn't work.

- Age can predict but not explain developmentl changes. A good theory needs to be able to explain rather than just describe - we need to understand the processes and mechanisms through which development occurs.