Describe four key features of the life-span perspective. How do these features speak to the three recurring issues in developmental psychology?

What will be an ideal response?

Paul Baltes and his colleagues produced a list of four essential features of the life-span perspective. They include multidirectionality (the idea that development includes both growth and decline in different domains at different ages), plasticity (the idea that skills and abilities can be learned, even late in life, and are not predetermined), historical context (the idea that development is affected by the historical time and events that occur in which a person is born and the culture in which they grew up), and multiple causation (the idea that many different factors—biological, psychological, sociocultural, and life-cycle—influence the course of development).
There are several overlaps between these factors and the three recurring issues in developmental psychology. Accurate answers will find these connections and cogently comment on the commonalities. For example, the idea of plasticity is very interwoven into the nature/nurture debate, as it addresses what is a function of our surroundings and ability to learn from our environment and what is predetermined by genetics. Multidirectionality could be linked to the idea of continuity and discontinuity, as ‘forward growth' and ‘backward decline' could be seen as being continuous or discontinuous in a developmental path. Though the biopsychosocial model is not one of the recurring issues noted in the beginning of this chapter, individual instructors may consider giving credit for linking that model to the idea of multiple causation.
These sorts of connections, as well as other creative links, are the foundation of a strong answer to this essay.