Principles of the life-span perspective - Baltes

Development is a lifelong process

Development is not tied to being a child, but continues throughout our lives.

Development is multidimensional and multidisciplinary

Human development must be seen in a multidisciplinary way as it is influenced by many factors, from biochemical reactions to historical events.

Development is multidirectional

In the past, development was seen as something universal that would lead to the same for everyone, seen as “mature” functioning. In reality, it is not a universal process. There are large inter-individual differences in development and different aspects of human functioning have different patterns of change over time:

• Different features begin to appear at different times

• Some intellectual abilities mature at different times

• Some begin to decline, at different times

• Some decline at different rates

Development involves gains and losses

Both gains (growth) and loss (decline) occur jointly in development.

• For example, when a baby learns to distinguish sounds in the spoken language around him, he loses the ability to distinguish sounds in another language.

Development is characterized by lifelong plasticity

Plasticity = the ability to change in response to experience, positive or negative.

Child development can be damaged by a deprived environment and optimized by an enriched one. This plasticity continues into later life. Older adults can maintain or regain some intellectual skills that were previously lost; this is rooted in neuroplasticity = the brain’s ability to change in response to experience.

Development is shaped by its historical-cultural context

This includes the healthcare system, social support system, pension system, or generation effects like having experienced war.

• During economic crisis, children were raised differently and had different experiences. In older age, these same children showed more problem behavior.

The course of age-related development being shaped by the socio-cultural conditions of a historical period contributes to cohort effects.

Development is contextualized

Development is the result of nature AND nurture. It is an unpredictable outcome of ongoing interactions between a changing person and the changing world.

Influences on development:

• Normative age-graded influences: biological and environmental factors that strongly correlate with age (e.g. puberty) or age-based social practices (e.g. starting school).

• Normative history-graded influences: an occurrence hat happened at a particular period to specific people, e.g. cohort effects.

• Non-normative influences: unpredictable and not tied to a certain developmental time in a person’s development or to a historical period.