10.5 Application and Reflection

Putting It Together: Lifespan Development

Our understanding of human nature has come a long way since the belief that children were just little adults in need of instruction. Through ongoing research, we now know that children hit certain milestones that enable them to take another viewpoint or understand the law of conservation, that babies can understand enough about the world around them to make moral judgments, and that issues of physical, social, and cognitive importance change across the lifespan.

Adolescence is one of the time periods of interest to psychologists, especially due to the focus on identity formation, which often involves a period of exploration followed by commitments to particular identities. Adolescence is characterized by risky behavior, which is made more likely by changes in the brain in which reward-processing centers develop more rapidly than cognitive control systems, making adolescents more sensitive to rewards than to possible negative consequences.

Marcia (1966) described identify formation during adolescence as involving both decision points and commitments with respect to ideologies (e.g., religion, politics) and occupations. He described four identity statuses: foreclosure, identity diffusion, moratorium, and identity achievement.

• Foreclosure occurs when an individual commits to an identity without exploring options.
• Identity diffusion occurs when adolescents neither explore nor commit to any identities.
• Moratorium is a state in which adolescents are actively exploring options but have not yet made commitments.
• Identity achievement occurs when individuals have explored different options and then made identity commitments.

Think about your own adolescent experience (you may consider yourself still in this life stage). Which identity status best fits with your own experience? Do you feel committed to your current identity, or do you feel as though you are still developing? Regardless of your answer, you can rest assured that human development does not end with adolescence, and research proves that people can continue to learn, grow, and even change as long as they would like.

Discussion: Lifespan Development

Stages of Development

STEP 1: In a discussion post of at least 200 words, demonstrate your understanding of concepts learned in this module by responding to the following prompt:

• Pick an age: 1, 3, 7, 12, 15, 22, 35, 50, or 75. Think of your own experience or the experiences of those you know at this age. Consider the major developmental theories you learned about in this module (psychosexual, psychosocial, cognitive, and moral), and apply them to the age of your choosing. Describe either your own experiences, experiences of someone else, or an imagined situation at this age and use appropriate terms and definitions from the module to describe that stage of development. Do you agree with the developmental theories that describe this age? Why or why not?

STEP 2: Comment on TWO other posts in at least 75 words.