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PSYCHOLOGY 2012: ADULT DEVELOPMENT & AGING
KEY FEATURES OF DEVELOPMENT:
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MULTIDIRECTIONAL (increase/
decrease/both)
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PLASTIC (improvement, adaptation,
environment)
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ROLE OF TIME AND PLACE (history,
culture)
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MULTIPLE CAUSES (contributions of
many disciplines: biology, sociology,
anthropology, etc.)
Cannot study development in a vacuum.
Theories and Models:
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Theories concerned with description and
explanation of age-related changes, e.g. drop
in IQ scores in old age. Different areas
(personality, moral development, etc.) rely on
different theories.
Example of theory: psychoanalytic
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Models cut across content areas and theories.
They describe how a specific developmental
process occurs and is organized (e.g. the
decrement model says that aging means
gradual loss).
Example of model: history-normative
Most Common Models:
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increment
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decrement (reversible or irreversible)
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stability (no change with age)
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normative:
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age-graded (biological or social) and
history-graded (environmental or biological)
non-normative:
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unique individual events
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Important: cohort effects: events that
affect a cohort.
Cohort: people born around the same
time.
Generation: 25 year cohort.
Smaller cohorts: 5 or 10 years.
Wars, famines, pandemics, affluence,
etc.
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Time of measurement or period effects:
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affects all ages, e.g. resettlement in NL,
Great Depression, commercial flying, etc.
Common Issues Studied:
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continuity vs. discontinuity of development
qualitative vs. quantitative change
plasticity vs. rigidity
multidirectional vs. unidirectional change
DOING RESEARCH:
Certain unique problems in developmental
research:
1. Cannot do experiments: age as a
variable cannot be manipulated.
2. Sampling: how random? Importance of
SES and health status.
RESEARCH METHODS:
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Data collection: sampling difficulties.
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Biased samples limit external validity:
can’t generalize to the whole population.
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Research population: all the individuals
in the group you want to study. If very
large, you draw a:
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Sample: randomly selected individuals from
that population.
Stratified random sample: including specific
groups.
1. EXPERIMENTS:
Manipulation of an independent variable (IV) causes
changes in the dependent variable (DV).
Main features of experiments:
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random assignment to conditions
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control group(s)
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double-blind technique
Common types of experiments:
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laboratory
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field
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quasi-experiment or naturalistic (no control of IV)
2. CORRELATIONAL STUDIES:
Correlation: association or relationship between
two or more variables.
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Allow predictions but no cause-effect can be
established.
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Lack of random assignment: no internal validity
Two designs based on correlations:
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cross-sectional
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longitudinal
Cross-sectional: compares
several groups of different ages.
Advantages: fast, relatively
inexpensive.
Disadvantages: cohort effects: are
the differences among groups due
to age or to cohort?
Longitudinal: follows one group over
time.
Advantages: changes more clearly due
to age.
Disadvantages: long term, attrition,
test-retest effects, expensive, possible
age/time of measurement confound,
i.e., period effects.
Some disadvantages overcome
when using different combinations
of both longitudinal and crosssectional. Also, by using Time-lag
design: hold age constant, vary
time of measurement.
Sequential Designs:
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Cohort-Sequential:
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Longitudinal + Time Lag
Time-Sequential:
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Cross-Sectional + Time Lag
Cross-Sequential:
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Cross-Sectional + Longitudinal
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Cohort-Sequential:
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age vs. cohort ignores historical time effects
Time Sequential:
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age effects vs. historical or time of
measurement
ignores cohort effects
Cross-Sequential:
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cohort vs. time of measurement
ignores age effects
Schaie’s Most Efficient Design Also
Called Combination or Trifactorial
Schaie Adds:
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Independent Subjects
Possible confound for all repeated
measurements:
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regression to the mean
Drawbacks:
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long, cumbersome, expensive
3. Self-reports:
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letters, diaries, questionnaires and
interviews.
Biases in questions:
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Social desirability
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Yea/nay sayers
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Biased wording
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Biased interviewer/observer
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Cultural biases
4. Systematic Observations:
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naturalistic
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laboratory
5. Case Studies (clinical method)
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE:
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Childhood:
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normative events most important (school,
etc.).
Adulthood:
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non-normative events accumulate leading to
vast individual differences: the usual
development theories don’t necessarily
apply.
In adulthood chronological age is a much
poorer guide to development studies.
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
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Mechanistic Theories:
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analogy to machine, computer. Individual is passive.
External forces dominate development (e.g. S-R
theories)
Organismic Theories:
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individuals are active, interact with the environment.
Developmental change has a goal (e.g. Piaget)
Dialectic Theories:
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people interact with a constantly changing
environment and they in turn change. Heavy
emphasis on history-normative events: the
development of someone born in 1890 is different
from that of someone born in 1990.
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE:
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Study age-related changes in roles within
society. Examples:
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how a 25-year old and a 70-year old
interact, which also changes at different
points in history.
how institutions respond to changing social
conditions, e.g. divorce rate.
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE:
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Developmental patterns across cultures.
Example: status of elderly in Japan and
its effects on old people’s development.
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE:
Examples:
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Changing role of families
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The word adulthood didn’t exist before
1870
Approach
Author(s) Associated
with Approach
Topical Area to Which
Applied
Behavioral, social learning
Bandura (1969, 1977)
Seligman (1972)
Learning
Motivation
Psychoanalytic
Freud (1946)
Erikson (1964, 1979)
Personality
Motivation
Humanistic
Maslow (1970)
Kohlberg (1973, 1981)
Motivation
Moral development
Individual differences
Cattell (1971), Horn (1982)
Guildford, Zimmerman, and
Guilford (1976)
Schaie (1977/1978)
Intellectual development
Personality
Attribution
Whitbourne (1985b)
Self-concept
Social psychology
Information processing
Sternberg (1980)
Learning, Memory
Dialectical
Riegel (1975, 1976)
Personality, Life crises
Ecological
Bronfenbrenner (1979)
Person/environment
Phenomenological
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
BALTES’ THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE:
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Life-span approach: development takes
a lifetime and each stage is equally
important.
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Dynamic interaction between growth,
maintenance and loss.
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Early phase (childhood and
adolescence) and later phase
(adulthood) have different progress: rapid
and slower changes.
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Multidisciplinary approach needed.