{"id":37,"date":"2018-12-16T21:04:47","date_gmt":"2018-12-16T21:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/chapter\/the-lifespan-perspective-2\/"},"modified":"2018-12-16T21:04:47","modified_gmt":"2018-12-16T21:04:47","slug":"the-lifespan-perspective-2","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/chapter\/the-lifespan-perspective-2\/","title":{"raw":"The Lifespan Perspective","rendered":"The Lifespan Perspective"},"content":{"raw":"<span style=\"color: #339966\"><a href=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3707\/2018\/12\/19185011\/lifespanperspective.jpg\"><img class=\"wp-image-3574 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3707\/2018\/12\/19185011\/lifespanperspective-300x192.jpg\" alt=\"Several people walking down a street shown from above\" width=\"304\" height=\"194\"><\/a><\/span>As we have learned, human development refers to the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes and constancies in humans over time. There are various theories pertaining to each domain of development, and often theorists and researchers focus their attention on specific periods of development (with most traditionally focusing on infancy and childhood; some on adolescence). But isn't it possible that development during one period affects development in other periods and that humans can grow and change across adulthood too? In this section, we'll learn about development through the lifespan perspective, which emphasizes the multidimensional, interconnected, and ever-changing influences on development.\n\n[caption id=\"attachment_6427\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"349\"]<img class=\"wp-image-6427\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4868\/2018\/12\/11114220\/life-stage-icon-2889015_1280.png\" alt=\"Icon of a child, teenager, and adult.\" width=\"349\" height=\"349\"> <span style=\"color: #333333\"><strong>Figure 1.5.1<\/strong>. Baltes' lifespan perspective emphasizes that development is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, contextual, and multidisciplinary. Think of ways your own development fits in with each of these concepts as you read about the terms in more detail.<\/span>[\/caption]\n\nLifespan development\u00a0involves the exploration of biological, cognitive, and psychosocial changes and constancies that occur throughout the entire course of life. It has been presented as a theoretical perspective, proposing several fundamental, theoretical, and methodological principles about the nature of human development. An attempt by researchers has been made to examine whether research on the nature of development suggests a specific metatheoretical worldview. Several beliefs, taken together, form the \u201cfamily of perspectives\u201d that contribute to this particular view.\n\nGerman psychologist Paul Baltes, a leading expert on lifespan development and aging, developed\u00a0one of the approaches to studying development called the <strong>lifespan perspective<\/strong>. This approach is based on several key principles:\n<ul>\n \t<li>Development occurs across one\u2019s entire life, or is <em>lifelong.<\/em><\/li>\n \t<li>Development is <em>multidimensional,\u00a0<\/em>meaning it involves the\u00a0dynamic interaction of factors like physical, emotional, and psychosocial development<\/li>\n \t<li>Development is <em>multidirectional\u00a0<\/em>and results in gains and losses throughout life<\/li>\n \t<li>Development is <em>plastic<\/em>, meaning that characteristics are malleable or changeable.<\/li>\n \t<li>Development is influenced by <em>contextual<\/em> and socio-cultural influences.<\/li>\n \t<li>Development is <em>multidisciplinary.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Development is Lifelong<\/h2>\nLifelong development\u00a0means that development is not completed\u00a0in infancy or childhood or at any specific age; it encompasses the entire lifespan, from conception to death. The study of development traditionally focused almost exclusively on the changes occurring from conception to adolescence and the gradual decline in old age; it was believed that the five or six decades after adolescence yielded little to no developmental change at all. The current view reflects the possibility that specific changes in development can occur later in life, without having been established at birth. The early events of one\u2019s childhood can be transformed by later events in one\u2019s life. This belief clearly emphasizes that all stages of the lifespan contribute to the regulation of the nature of human development.\n\nMany diverse patterns of change, such as direction, timing, and order, can vary among individuals and affect the ways in which they develop. For example, the developmental timing of events can affect individuals in different ways because of their current level of maturity and understanding.\u00a0As individuals move through life, they are faced with many challenges, opportunities, and situations that impact their development.\u00a0Remembering that development is a lifelong process that helps us gain a wider perspective on the meaning and impact of each event.\n<h2>Development is Multidimensional<\/h2>\nBy multidimensionality, Baltes is referring to the fact that a complex interplay of factors influence development across the lifespan, including biological, cognitive, and socioemotional changes. Baltes argues that a dynamic interaction of these factors is what influences an individual\u2019s development.\n\nFor example,\u00a0in adolescence, puberty consists of physiological and physical changes with changes in hormone levels,\u00a0the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics, alterations in height and weight, and several other bodily changes. But\u00a0these are not the only types of changes taking place; there are also cognitive changes, including the development of advanced cognitive faculties such as the ability to think abstractly. There are also emotional and social changes involving regulating emotions, interacting with peers, and possibly dating. The fact that the term puberty encompasses such a broad range of domains illustrates the multidimensionality component of development (think\u00a0back to the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial domains of human development we discussed earlier in this module).\n<h2>Development is Multidirectional<\/h2>\nBaltes states that the development of a particular domain does not occur in a strictly linear fashion but that development of certain traits can be characterized as having the capacity for both an increase and decrease in efficacy over the course of an individual\u2019s life.\n\nIf we use the example of puberty again, we can see that certain domains may improve or decline in effectiveness during this time. For example, self-regulation is one domain of puberty that undergoes profound multidirectional changes during the adolescent period. During childhood, individuals have difficulty effectively regulating their actions and impulsive behaviors. Scholars have noted that this lack of effective regulation often results in children engaging in behaviors without fully considering the consequences of their actions. Over the course of puberty, neuronal changes modify this unregulated behavior by increasing the ability to regulate emotions and impulses. Inversely, the ability for adolescents to engage in spontaneous activity and creativity, both domains commonly associated with impulse behavior, decrease over the adolescent period in response to changes in cognition.\u00a0Neuronal changes to the limbic system and prefrontal cortex of the brain, which\u00a0begin in puberty lead to the development of self-regulation, and the ability to consider the consequences of one\u2019s actions (though recent brain research reveals that this connection will continue to develop into early adulthood).\n\nExtending on the premise of multidirectionality, Baltes also argued that development is\u00a0influenced by the \u201cjoint expression of features of growth (gain) and decline (loss). This relation between developmental gains and losses occurs in a direction to selectively optimize particular capacities. This requires the sacrificing of other functions, a process known as selective optimization with compensation. According to the process of selective optimization, individuals prioritize particular functions above others, reducing the adaptive capacity of particulars for specialization and improved efficacy of other modalities.\n\nThe acquisition of effective self-regulation in adolescents illustrates this gain\/loss concept. As adolescents gain the ability to effectively regulate their actions, they may be forced to sacrifice other features to selectively optimize their reactions. For example, individuals may sacrifice their capacity to be spontaneous or creative if they are constantly required to make thoughtful decisions and regulate their emotions. Adolescents may also be forced to sacrifice their fast reaction times toward processing stimuli in favor of being able to fully consider the consequences of their actions.\n<h2>Development is Plastic<\/h2>\nPlasticity denotes intrapersonal variability and focuses heavily on the potentials and limits of the nature of human development. The notion of plasticity emphasizes that there are many possible developmental outcomes and that the nature of human development is much more open and pluralistic than originally implied by traditional views; there is no single pathway that must be taken in an individual\u2019s development across the lifespan. Plasticity is imperative to current research because the potential for intervention is derived from the notion of plasticity in development. Undesired development or behaviors could potentially be prevented or changed.<span style=\"color: #339966\">\n<\/span>\n\nAs an example, recently researchers have been analyzing how other senses compensate for the loss of vision in blind individuals. Without visual input, blind humans have demonstrated that tactile and auditory functions still fully develop and they can use tactile and auditory cues to perceive the world around them. One experiment designed by R\u00f6der and colleagues (1999) compared the auditory localization skills of people who are blind with people who are sighted by having participants locate sounds presented either centrally or peripherally (lateral) to them. Both congenitally blind adults and sighted adults could locate a sound presented in front of them with precision but people who are blind were clearly superior in locating sounds presented laterally. Currently, brain-imaging studies have revealed that the sensory cortices in the brain are reorganized after visual deprivation. These findings suggest that when vision is absent in development, the auditory cortices in the brain recruit areas that are normally devoted to vision, thus becoming further refined.\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>Link to Learning<\/h3>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?time_continue=146&amp;v=_Y4KsUqmuUw\">Watch Seeing Behind the Visual Cortex, a video about research on blindsight<\/a> conducted by Dr. Tony Ro to learn more about brain plasticity in blind individuals.\n\n<\/div>\nA significant aspect of the aging process is cognitive decline. The dimensions of cognitive decline are partially reversible, however, because the brain retains the lifelong capacity for plasticity and reorganization of cortical tissue. Mahncke and colleagues developed a brain plasticity-based training program that induced learning in mature adults experiencing age-related decline. This training program focused intensively on aural language reception accuracy and cognitively demanding exercises that have been proven to partially reverse the age-related losses in memory. It included highly rewarding novel tasks that required attention control and became progressively more difficult to perform. In comparison to the control group, who received no training and showed no significant change in memory function, the experimental training group displayed a marked enhancement in memory that was sustained at the 3-month follow-up period. These findings suggest that cognitive function, particularly memory, can be significantly improved in mature adults with age-related cognitive decline by using brain plasticity-based training methods.\n<div>\n<h2>Development is Contextual<\/h2>\n<\/div>\nIn Baltes\u2019 theory, the paradigm of contextualism refers to the idea that three systems of biological and environmental influences work together to influence development. Development occurs in context and varies from person to person, depending on factors such as a person\u2019s biology, family, school, church, profession, nationality, and ethnicity. Baltes identified three types of influences that operate throughout the life course: normative age-graded influences, normative history-graded influences, and non-normative influences. Baltes wrote that these three influences operate throughout the life course, their effects accumulate with time, and, as a dynamic package, they are responsible for how lives develop.\n\n<strong>Normative age-graded influences<\/strong>\u00a0are those biological and environmental factors that have a strong correlation with chronological age, such as puberty or menopause, or age-based social practices such as beginning school or entering retirement.\u00a0<strong>Normative history-graded influences<\/strong>\u00a0are associated with a specific time period that defines the broader environmental and cultural context in which an individual develops. For example, development and identity are influenced by historical events of the people who experience them, such as the Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam, the Cold War, the War on Terror, or advances in technology.\n\nThis has been exemplified in numerous studies, including Nesselroade and Baltes\u2019, showing that the level and direction of change in adolescent personality development was influenced as strongly by the socio-cultural settings at the time (in this case, the Vietnam War) as age-related factors. The study involved individuals of four different adolescent age groups who all showed significant personality development in the same direction (a tendency to occupy themselves with ethical, moral, and political issues rather than cognitive achievement). Similarly, Elder showed that the Great Depression was a setting that significantly affected the development of adolescents and their corresponding adult personalities by showing a similar common personality development across age groups. Baltes\u2019 theory also states that the historical socio-cultural setting had an effect on the development of an individual\u2019s intelligence. The areas of influence that Baltes thought most important to the development of intelligence were health, education, and work. The first two areas, health and education, significantly affect adolescent development because healthy children who are educated effectively will tend to develop a higher level of intelligence. The environmental factors, health and education, have been suggested by Neiss and Rowe to have as much effect on intelligence as inherited intelligence.\n\n<strong>Non-normative influences<\/strong>\u00a0are unpredictable and not tied to a certain time in a person\u2019s development or to a historical period. They are the unique experiences of an individual, whether biological or environmental, that shape the development process. These could include milestones like earning a master\u2019s degree or getting a certain job offer or other events like going through a divorce or coping with the death of a child.\n\nThe most important aspect of\u00a0contextualism as a paradigm is that the three systems of influence work together to\u00a0affect development. Concerning adolescent development, the age-graded influences would help to explain the similarities within a cohort, the history-graded influences would help to explain the differences between cohorts, and the non-normative influences would explain the idiosyncrasies of each adolescent\u2019s individual development. When all influences are considered together, it\u00a0provides a broader explanation of an adolescent\u2019s development.\n<h3>Other Contextual Influences on Development: Cohort, Socioeconomic Status, and Culture<\/h3>\nWhat is meant by the word \u201ccontext\u201d? It means that we are influenced by when and where we live. Our actions, beliefs, and values are a response to the circumstances surrounding us. Sternberg describes contextual intelligence as the ability to understand what is called for in a situation (Sternberg, 1996).\u00a0The key here is to understand that behaviors, motivations, emotions, and choices are all part of a bigger\u00a0picture.\u00a0Our concerns are such because of who we are socially, where we live, and when we live; they are part of a social climate and set of realities that surround us. Important social factors include cohort, social class,\u00a0gender, race, ethnicity, and age. Let\u2019s begin by exploring two of these: cohort and social class.\n\nA\u00a0<strong>cohort<\/strong>\u00a0is a group of people who are born at roughly the same time period in a particular society.\u00a0Cohorts share histories and contexts for living.\u00a0Members of a cohort have experienced the same historical events and cultural climates which have an impact on the values, priorities, and goals that may guide their lives. Consider the differences in experiences of someone from the \u2018Silent\u2019 generation that lived with constant scarcity and rationing during WWII versus the economic prosperity that followed for the \u2018Baby Boomer\u2019 generation and how those historical contexts influence their development.\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>watch it<\/h3>\n<strong>Video 1.5.1.<\/strong> <em>Generations Throughout History<\/em> describes the normative history-graded influences that shaped the development of seven generations over the past 125 years of United States history. Can you identify your generation? Does the description seem accurate?\n\n[embed]https:\/\/youtu.be\/IfYjGxI6AJ8[\/embed]\n\n<\/div>\nAnother context that affects our lives is our social standing, socioeconomic status, or social class.\u00a0<strong>Socioeconomic status<\/strong>\u00a0is a way to identify families and households based on their shared levels of education, income, and occupation.\u00a0While there is certainly individual variation, members of a social class tend to share similar lifestyles, patterns of consumption, parenting styles, stressors, religious preferences, and other aspects of daily life. We also find differences between social classes in these and other areas of development. Often, those in low socioeconomic groups, people living in poverty, are disadvantaged, lack opportunities, and have different life experiences than those with more financial stability and wealth.\n\n<strong>Poverty<\/strong> describes the state of not having access to material resources, wealth, or income, and also includes the lack of opportunity to improve one\u2019s standard of living and acquire resources. <strong>Life chances<\/strong> is a term used to describe someone\u2019s access to marketplace resources\u2014essentially, how likely it is in their environment that they might be able to find employment or have a social safety net. Someone who is living in poverty but has high life chances may be able to improve their economic standing, but someone with low life chances will likely have a consistently low standard of living. The term for a person\u2019s ability to change their economic status in a society is known as <strong>social mobility<\/strong>.\n\nWhen families have low social mobility, they may become trapped in poverty for generations; we refer to this as the <strong>cycle of poverty<\/strong>. Typically, these families have either limited or nonexistent social and economic resources. There are many disadvantages that collectively work in a circular process to make it virtually impossible for individuals to break the cycle of poverty. They are less likely to have financial capital, education, job skills, reliable transportation, and social capital (connections to people with specialized knowledge or in power). Without these resources, poverty-stricken individuals experience disadvantages that, in turn, increase their poverty.\n\nAdditionally, those living in poverty suffer disproportionately from hunger, poor nutrition, and exhibit disproportionately high rates of physical and mental health issues. These illnesses can be disabling, preventing people in poverty from working, thus reducing one\u2019s opportunities to improve their social and economic status.\n\nFinally, poverty increases the risk of homelessness. People who are homeless have low access to neighborhood resources, high-status social contacts, or basic services such as a phone line, limiting their ability to improve their economic position, again perpetuating poverty.\n\n<strong>Culture<\/strong>\u00a0is often referred to as a blueprint or guideline shared by a group of people that specifies how to live.\u00a0It includes ideas about what is right and wrong, what to strive for, what to eat, how to speak, what is valued, as well as what kinds of emotions are called for in certain situations.\u00a0Culture teaches us how to live in a society and allows us to advance because each new generation can benefit from the solutions found and passed down from previous generations.\n\nCulture is learned from parents, schools, churches, media, friends, and others throughout a\u00a0lifetime.\u00a0The kinds of traditions and values that evolve in a particular culture serve to help members function in their society and to value their society.\u00a0We tend to believe that our own culture\u2019s practices and expectations are the right ones. This belief that our own culture is superior is called\u00a0ethnocentrism\u00a0and is a normal by-product of growing up in a culture.\u00a0It becomes a roadblock, however, when it inhibits understanding of cultural practices from other societies. Cultural relativity\u00a0is an appreciation for cultural differences and the understanding that cultural practices are best understood from the standpoint of that particular culture.\n\nCulture is a crucial context for human development, and understanding development requires being able to identify which features of development are culturally based.\u00a0This understanding is somewhat new and still being explored.\u00a0So much of what developmental theorists have described in the past has been culturally bound and difficult to apply to various cultural contexts. For example,\u00a0Erikson\u2019s\u00a0theory\u00a0that teenagers struggle with identity assumes that all teenagers live in a society in which they have many options and must make an individual choice\u00a0about their future. In many parts of the world, one\u2019s identity is determined by family status or society\u2019s dictates. In other words, there is no choice to make.\n\nEven the most biological events can be viewed in cultural contexts that are incredibly varied.\u00a0Consider two very different cultural responses to menstruation in young girls.\u00a0In the United States, girls in public schools often receive information on menstruation around 5th\u00a0grade, get a kit containing feminine hygiene products, and receive some sort of education about sexual health.\u00a0Contrast this with some developing countries where menstruation is not publicly addressed, or where girls on their period are forced to miss school due to limited access to feminine products or unjust attitudes about menstruation.\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>How Does socioeconomic status affect language development?<\/h3>\nThe achievement gap refers to the persistent difference in grades, test scores, and graduation rates that exist among students of different ethnicities, races, and\u2014in certain subjects\u2014sexes (Winerman, 2011). Research suggests that these achievement gaps are strongly influenced by differences in socioeconomic factors that exist among the families of these children. Low-income children perform significantly more poorly than their middle- and high-income peers on a number of educational variables: They have significantly lower standardized test scores, graduation rates, and college entrance rates, and they have much higher school dropout rates. Many of these problems start before the children even enter school.\n\nPsychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley (2006) spent their careers looking at early language ability and progression of children in various income levels. In one longitudinal study, researchers found that although all the parents in the study engaged and interacted with their children, middle- and high-income parents interacted with their children differently than low-income parents. The researchers found that middle- and high-income parents talk to their children significantly more, starting when the children are infants. By age 3, high-income children knew almost double the number of words known by low-income children, and they heard about 30 million more words than the low-income counterparts (Hart &amp; Risley, 2003). These gaps become more pronounced by kindergarten, with high-income children scoring 60% higher on achievement tests than their low-income peers (Lee &amp; Burkam, 2002).\n\nThere are solutions to this problem. Experts are working with low-income families to encourage them to speak more to their children and designing preschools in which students from diverse economic backgrounds are placed in the same classroom (Schechter &amp; Byeb, 2007).\n\n<\/div>\n<h2>Development is Multidisciplinary<\/h2>\nAny single discipline\u2019s account of development across the lifespan would not be able to express all aspects of this theoretical framework. That is why it is suggested explicitly by lifespan researchers that a combination of disciplines is necessary to understand development. Psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, educators, economists, historians, medical researchers, and others may all be interested and involved in research related to the normative age-graded, normative history-graded, and nonnormative influences that help shape development. Many disciplines contribute important concepts that integrate knowledge, which may ultimately result in the formation of a new and enriched understanding of development across the lifespan.\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\n<h3>THINK IT OVER<\/h3>\n<ul>\n \t<li>Consider your cohort. Can you identify it? Does it have a name, and if so, what does the name imply? To what extent does your cohort shape your values, thoughts, and aspirations? (Some cohort labels popularized in the media for generations in the United States include Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z.)<\/li>\n \t<li>Think of other ways culture may have affected your development. How might cultural differences influence interactions between teachers and students, nurses and patients, or other relationships?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\nhttps:\/\/assessments.lumenlearning.com\/assessments\/16497\n\nhttps:\/\/assessments.lumenlearning.com\/assessments\/16499\n\nhttps:\/\/assessments.lumenlearning.com\/assessments\/16498\n\n<\/div>","rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #339966\"><a href=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3707\/2018\/12\/19185011\/lifespanperspective.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3574 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3707\/2018\/12\/19185011\/lifespanperspective-300x192.jpg\" alt=\"Several people walking down a street shown from above\" width=\"304\" height=\"194\" \/><\/a><\/span>As we have learned, human development refers to the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes and constancies in humans over time. There are various theories pertaining to each domain of development, and often theorists and researchers focus their attention on specific periods of development (with most traditionally focusing on infancy and childhood; some on adolescence). But isn&#8217;t it possible that development during one period affects development in other periods and that humans can grow and change across adulthood too? In this section, we&#8217;ll learn about development through the lifespan perspective, which emphasizes the multidimensional, interconnected, and ever-changing influences on development.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6427\" style=\"width: 359px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6427\" class=\"wp-image-6427\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4868\/2018\/12\/11114220\/life-stage-icon-2889015_1280.png\" alt=\"Icon of a child, teenager, and adult.\" width=\"349\" height=\"349\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-6427\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"color: #333333\"><strong>Figure 1.5.1<\/strong>. Baltes&#8217; lifespan perspective emphasizes that development is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, contextual, and multidisciplinary. Think of ways your own development fits in with each of these concepts as you read about the terms in more detail.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Lifespan development\u00a0involves the exploration of biological, cognitive, and psychosocial changes and constancies that occur throughout the entire course of life. It has been presented as a theoretical perspective, proposing several fundamental, theoretical, and methodological principles about the nature of human development. An attempt by researchers has been made to examine whether research on the nature of development suggests a specific metatheoretical worldview. Several beliefs, taken together, form the \u201cfamily of perspectives\u201d that contribute to this particular view.<\/p>\n<p>German psychologist Paul Baltes, a leading expert on lifespan development and aging, developed\u00a0one of the approaches to studying development called the <strong>lifespan perspective<\/strong>. This approach is based on several key principles:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Development occurs across one\u2019s entire life, or is <em>lifelong.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Development is <em>multidimensional,\u00a0<\/em>meaning it involves the\u00a0dynamic interaction of factors like physical, emotional, and psychosocial development<\/li>\n<li>Development is <em>multidirectional\u00a0<\/em>and results in gains and losses throughout life<\/li>\n<li>Development is <em>plastic<\/em>, meaning that characteristics are malleable or changeable.<\/li>\n<li>Development is influenced by <em>contextual<\/em> and socio-cultural influences.<\/li>\n<li>Development is <em>multidisciplinary.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Development is Lifelong<\/h2>\n<p>Lifelong development\u00a0means that development is not completed\u00a0in infancy or childhood or at any specific age; it encompasses the entire lifespan, from conception to death. The study of development traditionally focused almost exclusively on the changes occurring from conception to adolescence and the gradual decline in old age; it was believed that the five or six decades after adolescence yielded little to no developmental change at all. The current view reflects the possibility that specific changes in development can occur later in life, without having been established at birth. The early events of one\u2019s childhood can be transformed by later events in one\u2019s life. This belief clearly emphasizes that all stages of the lifespan contribute to the regulation of the nature of human development.<\/p>\n<p>Many diverse patterns of change, such as direction, timing, and order, can vary among individuals and affect the ways in which they develop. For example, the developmental timing of events can affect individuals in different ways because of their current level of maturity and understanding.\u00a0As individuals move through life, they are faced with many challenges, opportunities, and situations that impact their development.\u00a0Remembering that development is a lifelong process that helps us gain a wider perspective on the meaning and impact of each event.<\/p>\n<h2>Development is Multidimensional<\/h2>\n<p>By multidimensionality, Baltes is referring to the fact that a complex interplay of factors influence development across the lifespan, including biological, cognitive, and socioemotional changes. Baltes argues that a dynamic interaction of these factors is what influences an individual\u2019s development.<\/p>\n<p>For example,\u00a0in adolescence, puberty consists of physiological and physical changes with changes in hormone levels,\u00a0the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics, alterations in height and weight, and several other bodily changes. But\u00a0these are not the only types of changes taking place; there are also cognitive changes, including the development of advanced cognitive faculties such as the ability to think abstractly. There are also emotional and social changes involving regulating emotions, interacting with peers, and possibly dating. The fact that the term puberty encompasses such a broad range of domains illustrates the multidimensionality component of development (think\u00a0back to the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial domains of human development we discussed earlier in this module).<\/p>\n<h2>Development is Multidirectional<\/h2>\n<p>Baltes states that the development of a particular domain does not occur in a strictly linear fashion but that development of certain traits can be characterized as having the capacity for both an increase and decrease in efficacy over the course of an individual\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<p>If we use the example of puberty again, we can see that certain domains may improve or decline in effectiveness during this time. For example, self-regulation is one domain of puberty that undergoes profound multidirectional changes during the adolescent period. During childhood, individuals have difficulty effectively regulating their actions and impulsive behaviors. Scholars have noted that this lack of effective regulation often results in children engaging in behaviors without fully considering the consequences of their actions. Over the course of puberty, neuronal changes modify this unregulated behavior by increasing the ability to regulate emotions and impulses. Inversely, the ability for adolescents to engage in spontaneous activity and creativity, both domains commonly associated with impulse behavior, decrease over the adolescent period in response to changes in cognition.\u00a0Neuronal changes to the limbic system and prefrontal cortex of the brain, which\u00a0begin in puberty lead to the development of self-regulation, and the ability to consider the consequences of one\u2019s actions (though recent brain research reveals that this connection will continue to develop into early adulthood).<\/p>\n<p>Extending on the premise of multidirectionality, Baltes also argued that development is\u00a0influenced by the \u201cjoint expression of features of growth (gain) and decline (loss). This relation between developmental gains and losses occurs in a direction to selectively optimize particular capacities. This requires the sacrificing of other functions, a process known as selective optimization with compensation. According to the process of selective optimization, individuals prioritize particular functions above others, reducing the adaptive capacity of particulars for specialization and improved efficacy of other modalities.<\/p>\n<p>The acquisition of effective self-regulation in adolescents illustrates this gain\/loss concept. As adolescents gain the ability to effectively regulate their actions, they may be forced to sacrifice other features to selectively optimize their reactions. For example, individuals may sacrifice their capacity to be spontaneous or creative if they are constantly required to make thoughtful decisions and regulate their emotions. Adolescents may also be forced to sacrifice their fast reaction times toward processing stimuli in favor of being able to fully consider the consequences of their actions.<\/p>\n<h2>Development is Plastic<\/h2>\n<p>Plasticity denotes intrapersonal variability and focuses heavily on the potentials and limits of the nature of human development. The notion of plasticity emphasizes that there are many possible developmental outcomes and that the nature of human development is much more open and pluralistic than originally implied by traditional views; there is no single pathway that must be taken in an individual\u2019s development across the lifespan. Plasticity is imperative to current research because the potential for intervention is derived from the notion of plasticity in development. Undesired development or behaviors could potentially be prevented or changed.<span style=\"color: #339966\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p>As an example, recently researchers have been analyzing how other senses compensate for the loss of vision in blind individuals. Without visual input, blind humans have demonstrated that tactile and auditory functions still fully develop and they can use tactile and auditory cues to perceive the world around them. One experiment designed by R\u00f6der and colleagues (1999) compared the auditory localization skills of people who are blind with people who are sighted by having participants locate sounds presented either centrally or peripherally (lateral) to them. Both congenitally blind adults and sighted adults could locate a sound presented in front of them with precision but people who are blind were clearly superior in locating sounds presented laterally. Currently, brain-imaging studies have revealed that the sensory cortices in the brain are reorganized after visual deprivation. These findings suggest that when vision is absent in development, the auditory cortices in the brain recruit areas that are normally devoted to vision, thus becoming further refined.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>Link to Learning<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?time_continue=146&amp;v=_Y4KsUqmuUw\">Watch Seeing Behind the Visual Cortex, a video about research on blindsight<\/a> conducted by Dr. Tony Ro to learn more about brain plasticity in blind individuals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>A significant aspect of the aging process is cognitive decline. The dimensions of cognitive decline are partially reversible, however, because the brain retains the lifelong capacity for plasticity and reorganization of cortical tissue. Mahncke and colleagues developed a brain plasticity-based training program that induced learning in mature adults experiencing age-related decline. This training program focused intensively on aural language reception accuracy and cognitively demanding exercises that have been proven to partially reverse the age-related losses in memory. It included highly rewarding novel tasks that required attention control and became progressively more difficult to perform. In comparison to the control group, who received no training and showed no significant change in memory function, the experimental training group displayed a marked enhancement in memory that was sustained at the 3-month follow-up period. These findings suggest that cognitive function, particularly memory, can be significantly improved in mature adults with age-related cognitive decline by using brain plasticity-based training methods.<\/p>\n<div>\n<h2>Development is Contextual<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<p>In Baltes\u2019 theory, the paradigm of contextualism refers to the idea that three systems of biological and environmental influences work together to influence development. Development occurs in context and varies from person to person, depending on factors such as a person\u2019s biology, family, school, church, profession, nationality, and ethnicity. Baltes identified three types of influences that operate throughout the life course: normative age-graded influences, normative history-graded influences, and non-normative influences. Baltes wrote that these three influences operate throughout the life course, their effects accumulate with time, and, as a dynamic package, they are responsible for how lives develop.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Normative age-graded influences<\/strong>\u00a0are those biological and environmental factors that have a strong correlation with chronological age, such as puberty or menopause, or age-based social practices such as beginning school or entering retirement.\u00a0<strong>Normative history-graded influences<\/strong>\u00a0are associated with a specific time period that defines the broader environmental and cultural context in which an individual develops. For example, development and identity are influenced by historical events of the people who experience them, such as the Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam, the Cold War, the War on Terror, or advances in technology.<\/p>\n<p>This has been exemplified in numerous studies, including Nesselroade and Baltes\u2019, showing that the level and direction of change in adolescent personality development was influenced as strongly by the socio-cultural settings at the time (in this case, the Vietnam War) as age-related factors. The study involved individuals of four different adolescent age groups who all showed significant personality development in the same direction (a tendency to occupy themselves with ethical, moral, and political issues rather than cognitive achievement). Similarly, Elder showed that the Great Depression was a setting that significantly affected the development of adolescents and their corresponding adult personalities by showing a similar common personality development across age groups. Baltes\u2019 theory also states that the historical socio-cultural setting had an effect on the development of an individual\u2019s intelligence. The areas of influence that Baltes thought most important to the development of intelligence were health, education, and work. The first two areas, health and education, significantly affect adolescent development because healthy children who are educated effectively will tend to develop a higher level of intelligence. The environmental factors, health and education, have been suggested by Neiss and Rowe to have as much effect on intelligence as inherited intelligence.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Non-normative influences<\/strong>\u00a0are unpredictable and not tied to a certain time in a person\u2019s development or to a historical period. They are the unique experiences of an individual, whether biological or environmental, that shape the development process. These could include milestones like earning a master\u2019s degree or getting a certain job offer or other events like going through a divorce or coping with the death of a child.<\/p>\n<p>The most important aspect of\u00a0contextualism as a paradigm is that the three systems of influence work together to\u00a0affect development. Concerning adolescent development, the age-graded influences would help to explain the similarities within a cohort, the history-graded influences would help to explain the differences between cohorts, and the non-normative influences would explain the idiosyncrasies of each adolescent\u2019s individual development. When all influences are considered together, it\u00a0provides a broader explanation of an adolescent\u2019s development.<\/p>\n<h3>Other Contextual Influences on Development: Cohort, Socioeconomic Status, and Culture<\/h3>\n<p>What is meant by the word \u201ccontext\u201d? It means that we are influenced by when and where we live. Our actions, beliefs, and values are a response to the circumstances surrounding us. Sternberg describes contextual intelligence as the ability to understand what is called for in a situation (Sternberg, 1996).\u00a0The key here is to understand that behaviors, motivations, emotions, and choices are all part of a bigger\u00a0picture.\u00a0Our concerns are such because of who we are socially, where we live, and when we live; they are part of a social climate and set of realities that surround us. Important social factors include cohort, social class,\u00a0gender, race, ethnicity, and age. Let\u2019s begin by exploring two of these: cohort and social class.<\/p>\n<p>A\u00a0<strong>cohort<\/strong>\u00a0is a group of people who are born at roughly the same time period in a particular society.\u00a0Cohorts share histories and contexts for living.\u00a0Members of a cohort have experienced the same historical events and cultural climates which have an impact on the values, priorities, and goals that may guide their lives. Consider the differences in experiences of someone from the \u2018Silent\u2019 generation that lived with constant scarcity and rationing during WWII versus the economic prosperity that followed for the \u2018Baby Boomer\u2019 generation and how those historical contexts influence their development.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>watch it<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Video 1.5.1.<\/strong> <em>Generations Throughout History<\/em> describes the normative history-graded influences that shaped the development of seven generations over the past 125 years of United States history. Can you identify your generation? Does the description seem accurate?<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"oembed-1\" title=\"Generations Throughout History\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IfYjGxI6AJ8?feature=oembed&#38;rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Another context that affects our lives is our social standing, socioeconomic status, or social class.\u00a0<strong>Socioeconomic status<\/strong>\u00a0is a way to identify families and households based on their shared levels of education, income, and occupation.\u00a0While there is certainly individual variation, members of a social class tend to share similar lifestyles, patterns of consumption, parenting styles, stressors, religious preferences, and other aspects of daily life. We also find differences between social classes in these and other areas of development. Often, those in low socioeconomic groups, people living in poverty, are disadvantaged, lack opportunities, and have different life experiences than those with more financial stability and wealth.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Poverty<\/strong> describes the state of not having access to material resources, wealth, or income, and also includes the lack of opportunity to improve one\u2019s standard of living and acquire resources. <strong>Life chances<\/strong> is a term used to describe someone\u2019s access to marketplace resources\u2014essentially, how likely it is in their environment that they might be able to find employment or have a social safety net. Someone who is living in poverty but has high life chances may be able to improve their economic standing, but someone with low life chances will likely have a consistently low standard of living. The term for a person\u2019s ability to change their economic status in a society is known as <strong>social mobility<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>When families have low social mobility, they may become trapped in poverty for generations; we refer to this as the <strong>cycle of poverty<\/strong>. Typically, these families have either limited or nonexistent social and economic resources. There are many disadvantages that collectively work in a circular process to make it virtually impossible for individuals to break the cycle of poverty. They are less likely to have financial capital, education, job skills, reliable transportation, and social capital (connections to people with specialized knowledge or in power). Without these resources, poverty-stricken individuals experience disadvantages that, in turn, increase their poverty.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, those living in poverty suffer disproportionately from hunger, poor nutrition, and exhibit disproportionately high rates of physical and mental health issues. These illnesses can be disabling, preventing people in poverty from working, thus reducing one\u2019s opportunities to improve their social and economic status.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, poverty increases the risk of homelessness. People who are homeless have low access to neighborhood resources, high-status social contacts, or basic services such as a phone line, limiting their ability to improve their economic position, again perpetuating poverty.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Culture<\/strong>\u00a0is often referred to as a blueprint or guideline shared by a group of people that specifies how to live.\u00a0It includes ideas about what is right and wrong, what to strive for, what to eat, how to speak, what is valued, as well as what kinds of emotions are called for in certain situations.\u00a0Culture teaches us how to live in a society and allows us to advance because each new generation can benefit from the solutions found and passed down from previous generations.<\/p>\n<p>Culture is learned from parents, schools, churches, media, friends, and others throughout a\u00a0lifetime.\u00a0The kinds of traditions and values that evolve in a particular culture serve to help members function in their society and to value their society.\u00a0We tend to believe that our own culture\u2019s practices and expectations are the right ones. This belief that our own culture is superior is called\u00a0ethnocentrism\u00a0and is a normal by-product of growing up in a culture.\u00a0It becomes a roadblock, however, when it inhibits understanding of cultural practices from other societies. Cultural relativity\u00a0is an appreciation for cultural differences and the understanding that cultural practices are best understood from the standpoint of that particular culture.<\/p>\n<p>Culture is a crucial context for human development, and understanding development requires being able to identify which features of development are culturally based.\u00a0This understanding is somewhat new and still being explored.\u00a0So much of what developmental theorists have described in the past has been culturally bound and difficult to apply to various cultural contexts. For example,\u00a0Erikson\u2019s\u00a0theory\u00a0that teenagers struggle with identity assumes that all teenagers live in a society in which they have many options and must make an individual choice\u00a0about their future. In many parts of the world, one\u2019s identity is determined by family status or society\u2019s dictates. In other words, there is no choice to make.<\/p>\n<p>Even the most biological events can be viewed in cultural contexts that are incredibly varied.\u00a0Consider two very different cultural responses to menstruation in young girls.\u00a0In the United States, girls in public schools often receive information on menstruation around 5th\u00a0grade, get a kit containing feminine hygiene products, and receive some sort of education about sexual health.\u00a0Contrast this with some developing countries where menstruation is not publicly addressed, or where girls on their period are forced to miss school due to limited access to feminine products or unjust attitudes about menstruation.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>How Does socioeconomic status affect language development?<\/h3>\n<p>The achievement gap refers to the persistent difference in grades, test scores, and graduation rates that exist among students of different ethnicities, races, and\u2014in certain subjects\u2014sexes (Winerman, 2011). Research suggests that these achievement gaps are strongly influenced by differences in socioeconomic factors that exist among the families of these children. Low-income children perform significantly more poorly than their middle- and high-income peers on a number of educational variables: They have significantly lower standardized test scores, graduation rates, and college entrance rates, and they have much higher school dropout rates. Many of these problems start before the children even enter school.<\/p>\n<p>Psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley (2006) spent their careers looking at early language ability and progression of children in various income levels. In one longitudinal study, researchers found that although all the parents in the study engaged and interacted with their children, middle- and high-income parents interacted with their children differently than low-income parents. The researchers found that middle- and high-income parents talk to their children significantly more, starting when the children are infants. By age 3, high-income children knew almost double the number of words known by low-income children, and they heard about 30 million more words than the low-income counterparts (Hart &amp; Risley, 2003). These gaps become more pronounced by kindergarten, with high-income children scoring 60% higher on achievement tests than their low-income peers (Lee &amp; Burkam, 2002).<\/p>\n<p>There are solutions to this problem. Experts are working with low-income families to encourage them to speak more to their children and designing preschools in which students from diverse economic backgrounds are placed in the same classroom (Schechter &amp; Byeb, 2007).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Development is Multidisciplinary<\/h2>\n<p>Any single discipline\u2019s account of development across the lifespan would not be able to express all aspects of this theoretical framework. That is why it is suggested explicitly by lifespan researchers that a combination of disciplines is necessary to understand development. Psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, educators, economists, historians, medical researchers, and others may all be interested and involved in research related to the normative age-graded, normative history-graded, and nonnormative influences that help shape development. Many disciplines contribute important concepts that integrate knowledge, which may ultimately result in the formation of a new and enriched understanding of development across the lifespan.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\n<h3>THINK IT OVER<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Consider your cohort. Can you identify it? Does it have a name, and if so, what does the name imply? To what extent does your cohort shape your values, thoughts, and aspirations? (Some cohort labels popularized in the media for generations in the United States include Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z.)<\/li>\n<li>Think of other ways culture may have affected your development. How might cultural differences influence interactions between teachers and students, nurses and patients, or other relationships?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"lumen_assessment_16497\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assessments.lumenlearning.com\/assessments\/load?assessment_id=16497&#38;embed=1&#38;external_user_id=&#38;external_context_id=&#38;iframe_resize_id=lumen_assessment_16497\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:400px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"lumen_assessment_16499\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assessments.lumenlearning.com\/assessments\/load?assessment_id=16499&#38;embed=1&#38;external_user_id=&#38;external_context_id=&#38;iframe_resize_id=lumen_assessment_16499\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:400px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"lumen_assessment_16498\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assessments.lumenlearning.com\/assessments\/load?assessment_id=16498&#38;embed=1&#38;external_user_id=&#38;external_context_id=&#38;iframe_resize_id=lumen_assessment_16498\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:400px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":185983,"menu_order":17,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"","CANDELA_OUTCOMES_GUID":"","pb_show_title":"","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-37","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/185983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/37\/revisions"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/0"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/37\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/child\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}