PYC4805
Adult Development
November 2022
Examination Q&A
Summary of information
,The life-span perspective divides human development into two phases: an early phase (childhood
and adolescence) and a later phase (young adulthood, middle age, and old age).
The early phase is characterized by rapid age-related increases in people’s size and abilities.
During the later phase, changes in size are slow, but abilities continue to develop as people
continue adapting to the environment (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 2006).
Viewed from the life-span perspective, adult development and aging are complex phenomena that
cannot be understood within the scope of a single disciplinary approach. Understanding how
adults change requires input from a wide variety of perspectives. Moreover, aging is a lifelong
process, meaning that human development never stops.
, One of the most important perspectives on lifespan development is that of Paul Baltes (1987;
Baltes et al., 2006), who identified four key features of the lifespan perspective:
1. Multidirectionality: Development involves both growth and decline; as people grow in one
area, they may lose in another and at different rates. For example, people’s vocabulary ability
tends to increase throughout life, but reaction time tends to slow down.
2. Plasticity: One’s capacity is not predetermined or set in concrete. Many skills can be trained or
improved with practice, even in late life. There are limits to the degree of potential improvement,
however, as described in later chapters.
3. Historical context: Each of us develops within a particular set of circumstances determined by
the historical time in which we are born and the culture in which we grow up. Maria’s experiences
were shaped by living in the 20 th century in a Chicano neighborhood in southwest Texas.
4. Multiple causation: How people develop results from a wide variety of forces, which we
consider later in this chapter. You will see that development is shaped by biological, psychological,
sociocultural, and life-cycle forces.
The life-span perspective emphasizes that human development takes a lifetime to complete. It
sets the stage for understanding the many influences we experience and points out that no one
part of life is any more or less important than another.
Basing their theories on these principles, Baltes et al. (2006) argue that life-span development
consists of the dynamic interactions among growth, maintenance, and loss regulation. In
their view, four factors are critical:
1. As people grow older, they show an age-related reduction in the amount and quality of
biologically based resources.
2. There is an age-related increase in the amount and quality of culture needed to generate
continuously higher growth. Usually this results in a net slowing of growth as people age.
3. People show an age-related decline in the efficiency with which they use cultural resources.
4. There is a lack of cultural, “old-age friendly” support structures.
Taken together, these four factors create the need to shift more and more resources to maintain
function and deal with biologically related losses as we grow old, leaving fewer resources to be
devoted to continued growth. As we see throughout this book, this shift in resources has profound
implications for experiencing aging and for pointing out ways to age successfully.
Adult Development
November 2022
Examination Q&A
Summary of information
,The life-span perspective divides human development into two phases: an early phase (childhood
and adolescence) and a later phase (young adulthood, middle age, and old age).
The early phase is characterized by rapid age-related increases in people’s size and abilities.
During the later phase, changes in size are slow, but abilities continue to develop as people
continue adapting to the environment (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 2006).
Viewed from the life-span perspective, adult development and aging are complex phenomena that
cannot be understood within the scope of a single disciplinary approach. Understanding how
adults change requires input from a wide variety of perspectives. Moreover, aging is a lifelong
process, meaning that human development never stops.
, One of the most important perspectives on lifespan development is that of Paul Baltes (1987;
Baltes et al., 2006), who identified four key features of the lifespan perspective:
1. Multidirectionality: Development involves both growth and decline; as people grow in one
area, they may lose in another and at different rates. For example, people’s vocabulary ability
tends to increase throughout life, but reaction time tends to slow down.
2. Plasticity: One’s capacity is not predetermined or set in concrete. Many skills can be trained or
improved with practice, even in late life. There are limits to the degree of potential improvement,
however, as described in later chapters.
3. Historical context: Each of us develops within a particular set of circumstances determined by
the historical time in which we are born and the culture in which we grow up. Maria’s experiences
were shaped by living in the 20 th century in a Chicano neighborhood in southwest Texas.
4. Multiple causation: How people develop results from a wide variety of forces, which we
consider later in this chapter. You will see that development is shaped by biological, psychological,
sociocultural, and life-cycle forces.
The life-span perspective emphasizes that human development takes a lifetime to complete. It
sets the stage for understanding the many influences we experience and points out that no one
part of life is any more or less important than another.
Basing their theories on these principles, Baltes et al. (2006) argue that life-span development
consists of the dynamic interactions among growth, maintenance, and loss regulation. In
their view, four factors are critical:
1. As people grow older, they show an age-related reduction in the amount and quality of
biologically based resources.
2. There is an age-related increase in the amount and quality of culture needed to generate
continuously higher growth. Usually this results in a net slowing of growth as people age.
3. People show an age-related decline in the efficiency with which they use cultural resources.
4. There is a lack of cultural, “old-age friendly” support structures.
Taken together, these four factors create the need to shift more and more resources to maintain
function and deal with biologically related losses as we grow old, leaving fewer resources to be
devoted to continued growth. As we see throughout this book, this shift in resources has profound
implications for experiencing aging and for pointing out ways to age successfully.
