ABSTRACT
The basic premise of any lifespan developmental approach that investigates human behavior is that potential for development extends throughout the lifespan. This simple statement represents a radical shift away from theorists, perhaps best represented by Piaget (1954, 1959, 1972), who were quite certain that development accelerated rapidly throughout childhood, followed by brief stability and then decline throughout the remainder of life. To this day, the majority of research within Developmental Psychology, for instance, concentrates on the very early years of our lives implicitly suggesting that the most important and interesting events of our existence occur in these early years. Lifespan developmentalists, on the other hand, do not consider any age, neither the first 12 years of life nor the last 12 years of life, to hold supremacy in regulating the nature of development (Baltes, Smith, & Studinger, 1992), although these researchers generally agree that the rates of development vary across the lifespan.
