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Introduction
In order to truly understand the life span perspectives we must first define developmental psychology, which is a field that falls under the topic of psychology that is centered on describing how individuals change and grow throughout the stages of their life. This field has also been noted to be one of the more popular fields to be studied. We, as humans, must first grasp the concept that before there can be an outcome there has to be a process or a beginning. We can always trace anything that exists back to a beginning, for people this beginning is birth and the developmental processes that follow are individual pieces of the life processes. Charles Darwin had a longing to understand just what evolution was and exactly how it worked; from this desire he drew the study of lifespan development. Adolescence and norms were first introduced to those in the field of science by way of a G. Stanley Hall publication (Boyd & Bee, 2006).Within this book these scholarly individuals could read about the first observational studies of children. Within this paper you will find the definition of lifespan development, a description of the many characteristics of the lifespan perspective, and the identifying factors of the human developmental domains and periods.
Lifespan Development
We recognize that within the lifespan there had to be a beginning; we know this because of the work of Charles Darwin. Darwin began the inner workings of human developmental studies and those early evolutionists who shared his opinions were soon to join in his studies. Darwin’s goal was to prove his theory of evolution; it was his belief that his best chance of proving his theory was to engage in intense studies of human development (Boyd & Bee, 2006). According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a lifespan is the average amount of time that an organism, material, or object can be expected to survive or last. If we look for
References: Boyd, D., and Bee, H., (2006). Lifespan Development, Fourth Edition. Boston, MA. Pearson Education, Inc. Baltes, P.B. (1987) Theoretical propositions of Lifespan developmental Psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline, Developmental Psychology, 23 611-626 Collins English Dictionary-Complete and Unabridged @ Harper Collins Publishers, 2003