The Life-Span Perspective

Life-span Perspective
The Life-span perspective of human develop doesn’t just consist of the time from birth to death, it even involves those months of conception that a person spends inside their mother’s womb. There have been many theorist and studies that have provided substantial evidence proving that babies do learn inside their mother’s womb especially during the last trimester of pregnancy. This perspective goes in depth to talk about the changes that an individual goes through both cognitively, physically, and socially as we reach different ages in our life.
These changes in each phase of life are broken up into 5 different aspects of change; multidirectional, multicontextual, multidisciplinary, multicultural, and plastic. Multidirectional
Many of these theories take into consideration the different studies from other scientists or specialists from other fields or disciplines. This special consideration gives them a multidisciplinary view of human development. It helps them to not only understand the “how”, but also to understand the “why” humans change and develop the way they do. The forth aspect of the life span development theory is the multicultural aspect of change. The multicultural aspect has to do with all the cultural behaviors that have been passed down from generation to generation. Some of these cultural behaviors or traditions weigh very heavy on the future characteristics and development of the people within them. The multicultural aspect is simply broken down into 3 different attributes or elements. It talks about ethnic groups, race, and culture and the difference there of. Being of the same ethnic group seems to describe of being of the same heritage or region, while race may simply mean of the same or similar outward appearance. Take for instance a person who might be of African American decent. Then on the other hand take an individual who might be from Africa. Society as a whole has labeled
Although a lot of these changes occur, many of them are influenced either by their heredity or outside influences such as schools, environment, and family. Francis Galton first tried to understamd and break down the effects of nature vs nurture had on intelligence. He took both identical, paternal, and co-located sets of twins and asked them series of questions and conducted tests such as reaction times and things of that nature in order to get some indication on intelligence. At that point and time, the IQ test was not invented so that he could test each individual and compare scores with their perspective twins. I personally think that our genes (heredity) gives us our arsenal of potential, but unless you are encouraged and shown how to develop and pull from those genes – they’re not nearly as powerful a tool. Take for instance that if 2 world class athletes, in prime physical shape, had a child together. That child would have the superior genetic make up to be a world class athlete themselves, but unless those attributes and will to train and work-out are instilled into him/her (environment); that child could simply grow up and be over-weight, non-athletic, and unmotivated. Your genes are