A Study of Life Span Development

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer explains that lifespan development and developmental psychology, in general, study the changes that occur in an individual throughout his entire lifespan, from his existence as a prenatal to old age and death. The writer notes that basically, lifespan development studies the evolution and changes of the individual, as well as of groups of individuals, over their entire period of life. On the other hand, the writer maintains that it is important to have a definition of the term development, as perceived by psychologists. It is much more difficult for an individual nowadays to be separated from the environment in which he lives and works and be examined as he is. The writer discusses that this can be in part beneficial for a psychologist, witnessing the object of study at work, in his own environment, but it can also be challenging, due to the fact that collectivism seems to be much better represented nowadays than individualism was before.

From the Paper:

"Among the most important categories of lifespan development methodologies, we can enumerate longitudinal study and cross-sectional study. In the longitudinal study, individuals that are born around the same period of time are jointly analyzed throughout their lifespan in order to observe not only individual development, but also differential individual development and see how and why individuals developed differently.
"On the other hand, in the cross-sectional study, the psychologist will aim to analyze individuals of different ages at a certain moment of time. Differently from the previous method, this will require fewer resources while provided useful resources about the individual development at various age stages. Cross-sectional study also helps lifespan development psychologists answer important questions referring to whether or not experience changes actual accumulation and development of an individual and how different age groups react differently in different situations ..."

Sample of Sources Used:

• From Answers.com. On the Internet at http://www.answers.com/topic/developmental-psychology?cat=health. Last retrieved on September 9, 2007
• Levy. 1978. From Woolf. Linda. 1998. Theoretical Perspectives Relevant to Developmental Psychology. On the Internet at http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/terms.html. Last retrieved on September 9, 2007
• From Woolf. Linda. 1998. Theoretical Perspectives Relevant to Developmental Psychology. On the Internet at http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/terms.html. Last retrieved on September 9, 2007
• From Life span development and lifelong learning. On the Internet at http://www.infed.org/biblio/lifecourse_development.htm. Last retrieved on September 9, 2007

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