Life-Span Developmental Psychology

Life-Span Developmental Psychology studies the Psychological change that occurs in a person in his life span. Various factors affect the actions we make.  A drug addict will stop taking drug in just a day, there would be some factors that would have led him t take the drug in the first place and there will also be some factors that would have made him to stop taking the drugs. When various factors are at play to help make decisions, it is believed that we only make decisions based on the same factors which psychologically influence our decisions. This is just one such example, the Life-Span Developmental Psychology basically deals with the study of various factors that lead to a person making decisions in his or her life.

Originally when Life-Span Developmental Psychology study started it was dealing with children and infants only, but with changing times it has now included young adults, adults, middle age people and old people also. Life-Span Developmental Psychology study is based on the issues of how the development occurs in an individual at the various stages of life as knowledge and experience increases. There are many factors taken into account before coming to a conclusion, factors such as

• Problem solving ability of the person
• Moral and conceptual understanding
• Language acquisition
• Social nature,
• Personality
• Emotional development
• Self realization

Life-Span Developmental Psychology uses the same methods of testing as used in Psychology field. The methods of testing that are used in Psychology field can be applied for adults, but the same method of testing cannot be used in infants and children. For infants Psychologists use the habituation methodology to study the response given by the infants. By the habituation methodology, they are able to easily understand the response given by infants to a certain stimuli. And in case of young adults, some of the techniques used as those of adults, can be used, but you cannot expect the same response as give by the adults.

There are various factors that affect the development of a person. Some of the factors are hereditary, environment, context influences, and normative influences, death in a family, accidents and many more. The study helps in finding out the reasons of why and how a human behaviour changes in his life span.

Questions:

• How accurate is the conclusion drawn?
• And is the conclusion same for every individual, or does it vary from person to person?