1.
ADOLESCENCE
AND ADULTHOOD

2.
 INTRODUCTION
 ADOLESCENCE
◦ Physical development
◦ Cognitive development
◦ Social and emotional development
 EARLY ADULTHOOD
◦ Physical development
◦ Cognitive development
◦ Social and emotional development
 MIDDLE ADULTHOOD
◦ Physical development
◦ Cognitive development
◦ Social and emotional development
 LATE ADULTHOOD
◦ Physical development
◦ Cognitive development
◦ Social and emotional development
 SUMMARY

3.
 Development is a lifelong affair, which does
not stop when we reach adulthood.
 Try this thought experiment. Whatever your
current age, imagine yourself ten years from
now.

4.
You in 10 years
 Will you have changed physically?
 Will you have attained any goals?
 Will your cognitive and occupational skills
have changed?
 Will you be richer or poorer?
 Will you have gained/retained/replaced a
partner?
 Will you have had children/seen existing
children grow up and leave home?
 Would you expect other people to regard
and treat you differently from the ways they
do now?

5.
 Consider You in 20 years …
 Or 30 years …
 It soon becomes clear when we contemplate
our own futures that change is inevitable.

6.
 But to what extent is development in
adulthood due to intrinsic, fundamental
changes in the organism, to accumulating
experiences in complex environments or to
social and community pressures to adapt?
 Is change continuous and gradual, or is it
marked by major transitions?
 You will notice that these are similar issues to
those questions we considered with regard to
childhood development.

7.
 We here follow developments beyond
childhood, beginning with adolescence and
then moving into the phases of adulthood –
early, middle and late.
 Although there are many aspects to
development during adolescence and
adulthood, and wide individual variation in
circumstances and achievements, the core
issues again concern development from the
physical, cognitive and social perspectives.

8.
Adolescence
 It is difficult to decide exactly when
adolescence begins or ends, as both
boundaries are subject to individual variation.
 Is a person an adolescent when he or she
reaches a particular age – say, the teens?
 And when is adolescence complete – at the
end of the teens, at 21, or later?

9.
 For these reasons, psychologists working on
adolescence tend to define the period
broadly, as a time of transition between
childhood and adulthood, acknowledging that
the timing and pace of development is
subject to considerable variation.

10.
Physical development
 Through most of childhood, people grow at a
fairly steady pace – about 5–10 cm and 2–3 kg
per annum.
 But with the beginnings of adolescence, most
individuals undergo another radical change,
often called a growth spurt.
 In girls, this typically occurs at around age 10 to
13; in boys, it occurs between 12 and 15.
Growth is quite rapid compared to earlier in the
lifespan – a girl may add around 9 kg in a year,
and boys around 11 kg.

11.
Secondary sexual characteristics
 A particularly important physical change during
puberty is the emergence of secondary sexual
characteristics.
 Young people are now heading towards their
mature size and form, but the pace of
development varies markedly across individuals.

12.
During puberty, secondary sexual characteristics, such
as facial hair in males, begin to emerge. (Fig. 10.1)

13.
 These developmental changes are important
from a psychological perspective, because they
affect the young person’s sense of self and
relations with others.

14.
The effects of individual variation
 Variations in the pace of development lead to
complex outcomes.
 In some respects, those who mature early tend
to have an advantage in that they are seen –
and treated – as more adult-like.
 Some young people, especially males, gain from
this, developing greater popularity and
confidence that can endure into adult life.

15.
 In contrast, late maturers may experience
some insecurities as they compare
themselves with their peers who are ahead of
them in the prized achievement of growing
up.
 But there can be drawbacks to early
maturation, too.

16.
Cognitive development
 Less immediately visible is an intellectual growth
spurt during this period.
 The young person is becoming capable of
thinking about the world, and dealing with the
challenges it presents in new and more powerful
ways.

17.
The period of formal operations
 This is the last of Piaget’s stages of intellectual
development, when thought is no longer
considered to be dependent on concrete
operations tied to immediately present objects
and actions, but is based on reasoning about
abstract propositions and the evaluation of
alternative possible outcomes.

18.
 In one of Piaget’s tasks, participants were
presented with a set of pendulums, with objects
of different weights suspended from strings of
different lengths.
 The task was to determine what influences the
speed with which the pendulum swings: is it the
weight of the object, the length of the string, the
height from which the object is dropped, the
speed with which it is pushed, or some
combination of factors?

19.
Materials for the pendulum task. (Fig. 10.2)

20.
 Children still in the concrete operational stage
set about the task rather haphazardly.
 They tried guessing and random
combinations of actions but were unable to
isolate the effects of a single factor.
 Adolescents (aged 14–15) who had reached
formal operations worked in a much more
systematic fashion.

21.
 In these (and many other) tasks, formal
operational thinkers demonstrate not simply
that they are systematic and able to keep
track of their attempts, but that they are able
to formulate abstract hypotheses about
possible outcomes.
 They are able to conceive of different
propositions about the same set of factors,
and to work out means of testing them to
achieve a resolution.

22.
Piaget challenged
 These findings lead many researchers to favour
domain specific models of cognitive
development in adolescence.
 According to such models, developmental
progress depends at least in part on the
cognitive opportunities, tasks and challenges to
which adolescents are exposed.

23.
 Alternative accounts of adolescent reasoning
have been advanced more recently, drawing
upon information-processing theories, and
arguing that what really underpins
development in adolescence is not so much
changes in formal logical skills as changes in
processing capacity or efficiency – such as
improved memory skills or attention span.
 These capacities may also be linked to
ongoing neural developments.

24.
Social development
 The adolescent’s social world is changing fast.
 The changes reflect biological and cognitive
developments, as well as new opportunities
and the impact of other people’s expectations.

25.
Gender and sexual development
 During adolescence, gender becomes of much
more central importance for most individuals.
 Biological changes occurring during
adolescence make gender all the more salient –
to the adolescent and to others.

26.
 During childhood, cross-sex interests are
tolerated to some extent.
 But in adolescence, parents and peers tend
to provide stronger messages about
acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.
 A number of factors bear on young people’s
sexual development during adolescence; e.g.
increased hormonal levels are associated
with heightened interest in sex in both boys
and girls.

27.
Adolescents become
interested in adult
appearance. There is a
narrowing of gender
‘pathways’ and an
increased interest in
sex. (Fig. 10.3)

28.
The importance of peers
 There is no doubt that peers are very important
to adolescents.
 During this phase of the lifespan, people spend
increasing amounts of time in the company of
their peers and increasingly focus on peer
relations as crucial to their sense of identity.

29.
 Adolescents choose their friends, and they
themselves report that, although they are
subjected to peer pressures sometimes, they
do not generally experience this as a major
influence on their behaviour or as something
that they find particularly difficult to handle.
 Furthermore, perceived peer influence tends
to vary across different domains of life.

30.
 Rather than peers providing the antithesis of
parental influences, research suggests that
the relationship is more complex.
 In early adolescence, some patterns of
adolescent behaviour (such as drug use)
tend to show a greater association with
parental than peer practices.
 Whereas older adolescents perceive peer
influence in matters of drug use as greater
than parental influence.

31.
Parents are often the earliest models for smoking and, more
surprisingly, they are often the first to offer adolescents the
opportunity to try cigarettes for themselves. (Fig. 10.4)

32.
 However, evidence suggests that an
adolescent’s choice of peers is itself
influenced by his parents (i.e. the parents
encourage or discourage particular
friendships).
 So peers are important, but not omnipotent.
 ‘Common sense’ does not always provide a
reliable foundation for evidence-based
psychological analysis (see table 10.1).

33.
Myths and realities of adolescence. (Table 10.1)
Myth
Adolescence is a
period of storm and
stress
There is a huge
‘generation gap’
between adolescents
and their parents
Adolescents are
dominated by peer
pressure
Reality
Only a minority of adolescents
experience serious psychological
disturbances
Most adolescents continue to value their
parents as companions and as sources of
advice
Adolescents tend not to rate peer pressure
as a major problem and feel able to resist
it

34.
Myths and realities of adolescence (continued).
(Table 10.1)
Myth
Adolescents are
dominated by
television viewing
Adolescents are
irresponsible
Reality
Adolescents spend less time in front of
the television than other age groups
Many adolescents undertake substantial
responsibilities at home, at school and at
work

35.
Myths and realities of adolescence (continued).
(Table 10.1)
Myth
Adolescents are
reckless drug takers
Adolescents are all
the same
Reality
Most adolescents experiment with legal
and illegal drugs, but for the majority this
is a short-lived experimentation that does
not lead to dependency
This is patently not true: adolescence
covers a large developmental period, and
there are enormous individual differences
among people in this age group as in
others

36.
Early adulthood
 It makes sense to divide adulthood into three
broad phases: early (from approximately 18 to 40
years of age), middle (41–65), and late (66+).
 By the time we reach early adulthood, we have
spent a long time developing.
 Just as it is difficult to determine precisely when
adolescence begins and ends, determining
exactly when adulthood commences proves
elusive.

37.
Physical development
 Early adulthood is, for most people, the time
of peak physical capacity.
 The body reaches full height by the late
teens, and physical strength increases into
the late 20s and early 30s.
 Manual agility and coordination, and
sensory capacities such as vision and
hearing, are also at their peak.

38.
 But change is imminent, even in these basic
capacities.
 Some decline in the perception of high-
pitched tones is found by the late 20s
(Whitbourne, 2001), and manual dexterity
begins to reduce in the mid 30s.
 But in general, people in early adulthood feel
robust and energetic.

39.
 On the other hand, people in this age group
are also legally able to use damaging
substances, such as alcohol and tobacco,
and many can obtain access to illegal
stimulants or narcotics.
 And young adults have increasing
responsibility for organizing their own eating
habits and exercise regimes.
 Not surprisingly, the health status and
prospects of young adults are dependent
more than ever before on their own
behavioural choices…

40.
Cognitive development
 Although there are wide individual differences
in attainment, most young adults are able to
deal with cognitive tasks in a more abstract
way than before, and to attain solutions to
problems by comparing possible
explanations.
 Does this mean that cognitive development
has reached a plateau? Many investigators of
adult cognition think not.

41.
Riegel’s theory of postformal
thought
 Riegel (1975) proposed that adult experiences
expose us to a new level of cognitive challenge –
the discovery of dialectical (opposing) forces.
 In other words, we find that many aspects of our
environment can manifest contradictory features.
 This is especially so in the human environment;
for example, someone we love can be warm and
generous at times, but on other occasions the
same person can be self-centred and aloof. Are
they generous or selfish, affectionate or remote?

42.
 Riegel argued that achieving the intellectual
ability to deal with the contradictions that
confront us in our everyday life requires progress
to a fifth stage of reasoning – the stage of
dialectical operations, now more commonly
called postformal thought.
 Postformal reasoning: a level of thought
beyond Piaget’s period of formal operations,
characterized by the understanding that there
may be multiple perspectives on a problem and
that the most appropriate solutions may be
context dependent.

43.
Kramer’s three stages
 Kramer (1983, 1989) proposed that people
progress through three broad stages, each with
their own distinctive functional characteristics:
◦ Absolutist
◦ Relativist
◦ Dialectical

44.
 Absolutist reasoning assumes there is
always a single, clear answer to a given
problem.
 In dialectical reasoning, competing positions
are integrated and synthesis achieved.
 In relativist reasoning, the individual has
becomes aware that there are often different
perspectives on any given issue, and that the
‘correct’ answer may depend on the context.

45.
 In early adulthood, many people are in the
absolutist phase: they are capable of
addressing many problems, but they tend to
believe that all problems have a correct
answer.
 People in the relativist stage have become
aware that there are often different
perspectives on any given issue, and that the
‘correct’ answer may depend on the context.

46.
 Eventually, in the dialectical phase, people
become able to integrate competing positions
and achieve synthesis.
 They can understand why there are diverse
views, and they can appreciate that the
overall progress and contributions of their
chosen discipline derives from efforts to
resolve its internal contradictions.

47.
Measuring intelligence
 Other approaches to the investigation of
intellectual development in adulthood are
grounded in the psychometric tradition.
 By applying standardized IQ tests, researchers
have sought to discover whether there are age-
related differences in intelligence during
adulthood.

48.
 There are many different ways to measure
intelligence.
 K. Warner Schaie and his colleagues have
conducted major longitudinal studies of the
evolution of primary mental abilities among
several thousand adult Americans (Schaie,
1995, 2000).
 They focused on five primary abilities:
◦ numeric facility
◦ verbal recall
◦ verbal ability
◦ inductive reasoning
◦ spatial orientation

49.
Longitudinal patterns of cognitive abilities. (Fig. 10.5)

50.
Social and emotional development
 Young adults face some formidable
developmental tasks.
 Studying, employment and unemployment each
presents its stresses.
 At the same time, young adults tend to be
finding their way through the world of romance,
which can also lead to stress and anguish.
 All of this happens alongside changes in
relationships with parents, and the increasing
expectation that the young person will take
responsibility for their own life.

51.
A stage model for personal
development
 Several different theories have been put
forward to account for personal development
during early adulthood.
 From a psychoanalytic perspective, Erikson
(1997) sees the dominant focus of this stage as
the development of intimacy – the ability to love
and trust another person.

52.
 Levinson (1978) extended some of Erikson’s
ideas, but drew also on social psychological
theory to explain the relationship between the
developing individual and the demands of
society.
 Levinson emphasized the social role
requirements at different life stages, and the
interaction between personal growth and
relationships.

53.
 Dream: Levinson’s term for an individual’s
vision of his life goals, formed around 17 to 22
years of age and contributing to the motivation
for subsequent personal development.

54.
 The next sub-stage is the period of entering the
adult world (22–28), and is organized around
forging a pathway at work and attaining a
special personal relationship.
 This is followed by the ‘age 30’ transition (28–
33), in which people undergo a moderate
degree of self-questioning – reviewing their
Dream, the choices they have made and the
problems in their lives.
 The rest of this decade (33–40) is the ‘settling
down’ period, when people have usually found
their niche in life and are striving to consolidate
their professional and domestic roles – they are
basically getting their lives in order.

55.
The period of entering the adult world (22–28) is
partly organized around the world of work. (Fig.10.6)

56.
Intimacy – are you secure, anxious
or avoidant?
 According to developmental models such as
Erikson’s and Levinson’s, young adults are
developing a sense of personal identity along
with a need for closeness to others.
 Interestingly, there are strong similarities in the
ways people develop early relationships with
caregivers during infancy and intimate adult
relationships later on.

57.
 Some social psychologists (Mickelson,
Kessler & Shaver, 1998; Shaver & Clark,
1996) have argued that the types of
attachments we form as adults can be
classified using the framework Ainsworth and
others developed to account for infant
attachments – namely, ‘secure’, ‘anxious/
ambivalent’ and ‘avoidant’.

58.
 ‘Securely’ attached lovers find intimate
relationships comfortable and rewarding; they
trust their partner and feel confident of his or
her commitment.
 ‘Anxious/ambivalent’ lovers experience
uncertainty in their relationships; sometimes,
they fret that their partner does not love them
enough and might leave, and they may
respond to this anxiety by putting pressure on
the partner, running the risk of causing the
very outcome they fear.

59.
 ‘Avoidant’ lovers find getting close to others
uncomfortable, find it difficult to trust others,
and are reluctant to commit themselves fully
to a relationship.
 Shaver and colleagues found that the
proportions of adults who fall into these types
is very similar to those of infant attachments.

60.
Middle adulthood
 Once again, it is difficult to define this phase of
life precisely.
 The variety of human life courses means that
individuals can be in very different stages of
their personal development at the age point (i.e.
turning 40) that we have taken as a rough
measure of entry to middle age.

61.
 During mid-life, people experience a range of
external and internal physical changes.
 External changes include the appearance of
grey hair and hair thinning, increases in facial
wrinkles, and a tendency to put on weight
around the waist or lower body.
 Internal changes include reductions in the
efficiency of the cardiovascular, respiratory and
nervous systems.
 There are changes to the sensory capacities,
too; e.g. the onset of presbyopia and loss of
hearing (particularly sensitivity to higher
frequency sounds).

62.
Text as it appears
to a middle-aged
adult with
presbyopia. If
you notice an
adult at this stage
of life holding
printed matter
further away in
order to read it,
this is the most
likely explanation.
(Fig. 10.7)

63.
 This is the time when women experience the
menopause – the cessation of menstruation.
 Many women suffer some level of physical
and psychological discomfort as a result,
such as hot flushes, mood changes, loss of
libido and insomnia.
 But the intensity of these symptoms varies
considerably among individuals, and
menopausal status is not a strong predictor of
psychological distress.

64.
 As at other stages of the lifespan, physical
changes are closely interwoven with
psychological changes.
 Signs of aging prompt many people to review
their lives and some begin to feel dissatisfied
with their bodies.
 But menopausal women who take regular
aerobic exercise report more positive moods
and less somatic discomfort than non-
exercising peers.

65.
Cognitive development
 In terms of primary mental abilities, Schaie’s
(1995) data depict mid-life as a relatively stable
period.
 In fact, on most measures, middle-aged adults
perform as well as or slightly better than
younger adults.

66.
Life skills
 On ‘real world’ tests related to practical
applications of reasoning, such as how to
deal with faulty purchases, flooding in the
basement, middle-aged people scored
significantly higher than young adults.
 In other research, Denney and Pearce (1989)
found that the number of solutions people
generate in response to everyday practical
problems peaks in middle age.

67.
Emotion and clear thinking
 Some researchers argue that there is an
important reorganization of thinking in middle
adulthood, as people achieve an integration of
information-processing and emotional self-
regulation (Labouvie-Vief, 1999).
 Younger participants tend to be swayed by their
own emotions in conflict situations, while middle-
aged participants appeared to integrate
emotional understanding with other problem-
solving skills.

68.
Social and emotional
development
 Each phase of life brings new challenges, and
for many people mid-life brings a multiplicity of
them – from all quarters.
 By this time, people’s histories are very varied.
 So can we pin down any particular patterns of
social and emotional development associated
with middle age?

69.
The ‘mid-life crisis’…
 Generativity: the feeling in mid-life that one
has made or is making a contribution to the
next generation.
 A ‘link between the generations’, maintained
Erikson, is ‘as indispensable for the renewal of
the adult generation’s own life as it is for the
next generation’.

70.
Erikson argued for the importance of a ‘link between the
generations’, enabling the older generation to contribute
skills and knowledge to younger people – a process known
as ‘generativity’. (Fig. 10.8)

71.
 Stagnation is the opposing feeling of having
achieved relatively little and of having little to
offer to the next generation.
 Some people in mid-life, for example,
conclude that they have not met the family or
occupational goals that once motivated them.
 Some respond to this sense of ‘standing still’
with a period of self-absorption, and an acute
awareness that time is limited.

72.
 Individuals are likely to experience both types
of feeling – generativity and stagnation – and
the core developmental process of mid-life,
according to Erikson, is the resolution of this
conflict.
 Those who resolve it successfully attain a
sense of care (about both the present and
the future), and those who fail to do so
develop a sense of rejectivity (i.e. they turn
away from society and have little interest in
contributing to it).

73.
 Levinson (1978) also depicts mid-life as a
period of inner conflict.
 Levinson found that most of his interviewees
next underwent a period of mid-life transition
(40–45).
 These kinds of reassessment are popularly
associated with the notion of the ‘mid-life
crisis’.

74.
 But subsequent research shows that it is an
oversimplification to assume that everybody
undergoes a mid-life crisis. For example:
1. Periods of turbulence and self-doubt can
be experienced by adults of most ages,
and some individuals – especially those
who score highly on measures of
neuroticism – may be prone to develop
crises at any age.

75.
2. In larger samples than Levinson’s (1978),
only a minority of middle-aged people feel
they have experienced a crisis.
3. Substantial proportions of middle-aged
people report better mental health and self-
esteem during this phase of life than ever
before.

76.
 But there is no doubt that there are many
pressures on middle-aged people.
 Some of these pressures relate to domestic
and family life, and others to the world of
work.

77.
 For some middle-aged people, usually
women, looking after both their own children
and their aging parents can cause ‘caregiving
pile-up’ – an experience of overload due to too
many competing demands.
 As in earlier phases of life, the quality of a
person’s attachment to his or her partner has
important implications for adjustment, personal
satisfaction and dealing with life stresses.

78.
Late adulthood
 Late adulthood is perhaps the most difficult of
all to define precisely – mainly because there is
very wide individual variation in the physical,
cognitive and social processes of aging.

79.
Physical development
 In late adulthood, external physical changes
include changes in the skin (wrinkling, loss of
elasticity), loss of subcutaneous fat, thinning of
the hair, and changes in general posture due to
the loss of collagen between the spinal
vertebrae.
 There are also many internal changes, less
apparent to the onlooker but important to the
functioning of the aging individual.

80.
 These include changes to the cardiovascular
system and loss of cardiac muscle strength,
decline in muscle mass and reductions in the
efficiency of the respiratory, digestive and
urinary systems.
 But, although physical change is inevitable,
the timing and extent are highly variable (and,
to some degree, influenced by the
behavioural choices and lifestyle of the
individual).

81.
 Physical and sensory capacities, so important
in our earliest encounters with the world in
infancy, also tend to decline with age.
 If perceptual abilities were so vital at the outset
of life, what are the psychological
consequences of beginning to lose them?
 There is a strong connection between sensory
functioning and intelligence in old age; and
gradual deficits in hearing can affect older
people’s ability to process speech in the
context of other noise, which in turn affects how
easily they interact with other people.

82.
 But, once again, the extent of the impact of
biological decline varies from person to
person, and is influenced by both the rate of
change and the individual’s coping skills
(which are, in turn, influenced by personality
and social circumstances).

83.
Although physical change with age is inevitable,
physical strength and fitness decline less in people
who exercise regularly. (Fig. 10.9)

84.
Does intellectual capacity
decrease with age?
 Schaie’s and other research shows that while
there is variation between age groups on some
measures of intellectual performance, there is
also great variation within groups – and this
variation within groups increases with age
(figure 10.10).
 Older people do tend to perform less well than
younger adults on tasks dependent upon
reaction time and processing speed.

85.
Variance within age groups on tests of cognitive
function. (Fig. 10.10)

86.
 Some researchers have also reported that
older adults perform less well on Piagetian-
type tasks measuring formal operations.
 But these differences do not necessarily
support the conclusion that intellectual
capacity in the elderly is pervasively
inadequate: intelligent behaviour in everyday
life typically involves several capacities, and
people may be able to compensate for
reductions in one ability (such as processing
speed) by placing greater weight on another
(such as judgments based on experience).

87.
Another myth debunked
 Returning to figure 10.5 once more, it is
tempting to interpret the declining slope from
the 70s to 80s as confirming an inevitable
and irreversible decline in performance.
 But suppose we intervened by providing
training to show (or remind) older people how
to perform the kinds of tasks being tested?
Schaie and Willis and their colleagues have
done exactly this – with impressive results.

88.
 In a number of studies, they have found that
older people’s performance can be
significantly improved by training, and that
these benefits endure.
 Even reaction time can be improved in the
elderly, as Clark, Lamphear and Riddick
(1987) demonstrated by the imaginative
technique of training a group of older people
on video games.

89.
Social and emotional
developments
 Theorists such as Erikson (1997) and Levinson
(1978) regarded late adulthood as another major
stage of adult development.
 Erikson again saw the individual as facing a
conflict – this time between integrity and despair.
 He maintained that as people realize they are
coming towards the end of their life, they
reminisce about their past and review how they
feel about themselves.

90.
 Levinson saw the period from approximately
60 to 65 as the late adult transition, when the
individual has to deal with intrinsic changes in
capacity and performance, as well as changes
in relations with others and in society’s
expectations.
 All of these changes pose challenges.

91.
Relations with others
 As in all other parts of the lifespan,
relationships are important to the older person’s
adjustment.
 For some people, the marital relationship may
become more rewarding during old age.
 Some research has found that satisfaction with
marriage tends to be rated higher in retired
people than in middle-aged adults.

92.
 This may be partly because older married
people tend to be those whose marriages
have been successful (i.e. they have stayed
together because they were satisfied with the
relationship).
 But it could also be because partners now
provide each other with a degree of
companionship and support that may not
always have been so apparent or so
appreciated in busier earlier years, when
many other types of relationship were
competing with the person’s time.

93.
Although there are
losses and declines
with age, many people
respond to them
adaptively; indeed,
many older people
adjust well to the
changes associated
with ageing, and report
high levels of
enjoyment of life in
their later years. (Fig.
10.11)

94.
 On the other hand, it may be that older
people of today grew up in times when
marriages were expected to last, and so
their more positive ratings may reflect a
more traditional determination to ‘see things
through’.

95.
 Relationships with grandchildren and siblings
can also be very important, as are relations
with friends.
 Overall, when asked to identify the most
important considerations affecting quality of
life, older people consistently place personal
relationships and social networks high on
their lists.

96.
Successful aging
 Although there are losses and declines with
age, we have already seen that many people
respond to them adaptively – one of the
remarkable characteristics of human beings
throughout the lifespan is our resilience.
 What factors promote successful aging?

97.
 Social support and social networks emerge as
primary considerations.
 Paul and Mary Baltes and their colleagues
have investigated the processes of successful
aging among participants in the large-scale
Berlin Aging Study.
 They have proposed a model of ‘selective
optimization with compensation’, according to
which people face problems associated with
aging by finding ways to handle cognitive tasks
that minimize their dependency on their
declining biological capacities.

98.
 Researchers have also found that older
people show evidence of increasingly
complex reasoning about interpersonal
issues, life planning and moral dilemmas, and
they perform better than younger adults with
respect to oral narrative production.
 The good news for aspirant psychologists is
that a professional life involved in cognitively
challenging and stimulating work appears to
promote the prospects for successful aging.

99.
Summary
 The journey from adolescence through
adulthood involves many changes and
adjustments, and entails considerable individual
variation from one person to another.
 Psychological development involves physical,
sensory, cognitive, social and emotional
processes, and the interactions among these.
For example, the age at which a person enters
puberty can have implications for their
personality which can extend all the way through
their lives.

100.
 Although adolescence is a time of new
discoveries and new attainments, it is by no
means the end of development. Indeed,
according to some theorists, there are stages of
potential adult psychological development
which some of us may never attain.
 There is some evidence of broad patterns of
adult development (perhaps even stages), yet
there is also evidence of diversity and the
potential to affect our own development by the
life choices that we make.

101.
 Some abilities diminish with age, while others
increase; successful aging appears to involve
skilful re-balancing of the resources and
opportunities available to us, such that we
learn to make the most of our strengths at the
same time as coping with our limitations.