Psyche Questions

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Lifespan development is a complex and intriguing process which encompasses many unknowns. However, lifespan psychologist Paul Baltes has devised five variables he argues are characteristic of the lifespan development process: lifelong process, multidirectional, selection, plasticity, and embedded in history. Lifelong process refers to the phases of lifespan development being no more or less significant than the others, “No one developmental period is dominant in the course of development” (Dacey and Travers, 2002, 7). The multidirectional characteristic refers to the way that continuous change occurs within the dynamic between biology and culture. We may grow during childhood but we often adjust to loss in old age.

Selection is a characteristic that pertains to the fact that both our genes and our environment play a role in influencing the choices we make throughout the lifespan. The lifespan process is also one that exhibits plasticity, in other words there is a capacity for mutability during any phase of development within the lifespan. The characteristic of lifespan development referred to as embedded in history illustrates how sociocultural factors play a role in shaping our individual development paths. For example, women today develop along a much different course than did their grandmothers or great grandmothers.

Freud, Erikson and Piaget all viewed human growth as a stage development process. Freud’s theo

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oral theorists ignore the structural complexity of language. Cognitive oriented theories attempt to describe the maturation of mental capacities and the operation of mental processes on which language is presumably based. Developmental theorists trace the development of verbal language to preverbal behavior such as cries and cooing, social babbling, and the transformation of single sounds into phonemes. Through phonetic expansion and contraction, infants between the ages of six and twelve months acquire the ability to produce almost all the sounds that are heard in human speech. Dacey (et al. 2002) argue that language development encompasses three transitional phases as illustrated in the list below: First transition occurs are the end of the first year and continues in the second year with the appearance of words and the acquisition of a basic vocabulary. Second transition occurs when children change from saying only one word at a time to combining words into phrases and simple sentences about the end of the second year. Final transition occurs when children move beyond using simple sentences to express one idea to complex sentences expressing multiple ideas and the relations between them. (123) Fundamental from a psycho
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Approximate Word count = 4100
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

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