PSYCHOLOGY 2012: ADULT DEVELOPMENT & AGING

PSYCHOLOGY 2012: ADULT DEVELOPMENT & AGING KEY FEATURES OF DEVELOPMENT: • MULTIDIRECTIONAL (increase/ decrease/both) • PLASTIC (improvement, adaptation, environment) • ROLE OF TIME AND PLACE (history, culture) • MULTIPLE CAUSES (contributions of many disciplines: biology, sociology, anthropology, etc.) Cannot study development in a vacuum.

Theories and Models: • 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 • 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: • increment • decrement (reversible or irreversible) • stability (no change with age) • normative: • age-graded (biological or social) and • history-graded (environmental or biological) • non-normative: • unique individual events

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.

Time of measurement or period effects: • affects all ages, e.g. resettlement in NL, Great Depression, commercial flying, etc. • Common Issues Studied: • continuity vs. discontinuity of development • qualitative vs. quantitative change • plasticity vs. rigidity • multidirectional vs. unidirectional change

DOING RESEARCH: Certain unique problems in developmental research: • Cannot do experiments: age as a variable cannot be manipulated. • Sampling: how random? Importance of SES and health status.

RESEARCH METHODS: • Data collection: sampling difficulties. • Biased samples limit external validity: can’t generalize to the whole population. • Research population: all the individuals in the group you want to study. If very large, you draw a: • 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: • random assignment to conditions • control group(s) • double-blind technique Common types of experiments: • laboratory • field • quasi-experiment or naturalistic (no control of IV)

2. CORRELATIONAL STUDIES: Correlation: association or relationship between two or more variables. • Allow predictions but no cause-effect can be established. • Lack of random assignment: no internal validity Two designs based on correlations: • cross-sectional • 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 cross-sectional. Also, by using Time-lag design: hold age constant, vary time of measurement.

Sequential Designs: • Cohort-Sequential: • Longitudinal + Time Lag • Time-Sequential: • Cross-Sectional + Time Lag • Cross-Sequential: • Cross-Sectional + Longitudinal

Cohort-Sequential: • age vs. cohort ignores historical time effects • Time Sequential: • age effects vs. historical or time of measurement • ignores cohort effects • Cross-Sequential: • cohort vs. time of measurement • ignores age effects

Schaie’s Most Efficient Design Also Called Combination or Trifactorial • Schaie Adds: • Independent Subjects • Possible confound for all repeated measurements: • regression to the mean • Drawbacks: • long, cumbersome, expensive

3. Self-reports: • letters, diaries, questionnaires and interviews. Biases in questions: • Social desirability • Yea/nay sayers • Biased wording • Biased interviewer/observer • Cultural biases

4. Systematic Observations: • naturalistic • laboratory 5. Case Studies (clinical method)

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE: • Childhood: • normative events most important (school, etc.). • Adulthood: • 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 • Mechanistic Theories: • analogy to machine, computer. Individual is passive. External forces dominate development (e.g. S-R theories) • Organismic Theories: • individuals are active, interact with the environment. Developmental change has a goal (e.g. Piaget) • Dialectic Theories: • 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: • Study age-related changes in roles within society. Examples: • 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: • Developmental patterns across cultures. Example: status of elderly in Japan and its effects on old people’s development. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Examples: • Changing role of families • The word adulthood didn’t exist before 1870

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES BALTES’ THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE: • Life-span approach: development takes a lifetime and each stage is equally important. • Dynamic interaction between growth, maintenance and loss. • Early phase (childhood and adolescence) and later phase (adulthood) have different progress: rapid and slower changes. • Multidisciplinary approach needed.

PSYCHOLOGY 2012: ADULT DEVELOPMENT & AGING