Educational materials and resources are now available on-line from the three-part APA symposium series entitled: Forty-Five Years of Influence of the Lifespan Developmental Approach: Past, Present and Future. Funded by an APA Interdivisional Grant Program awarded to Div. 20 and co-sponsored by Div. 3 (Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science) and Div. 7 (Developmental Psychology), the overarching goal was to provide a review, examination and discussion of the influence of the Lifespan Developmental Approach across the past 45 years in the following areas: 1) theoretical and conceptual approaches, 2) methodological issues and 3) intervention, modifiability and plasticity. The Lifespan Developmental Approach has provided an overarching framework for understanding human development from conception to death.
As outlined and discussed by Staudinger and Bluck (2001), the Lifespan Development Approach encompasses the following tenets: 1) lifespan development is a continuous process influenced jointly by biology and environment, 2) development unfolds as a process that includes both gains and losses across the lifespan that results in a multidimensional, multidirectional and multifunctional perspective, 3) development across the lifespan results in changes in the interaction between biological and environmental influences that impact the allocation of resources, 4) lifespan development is a modifiable process that is amenable to intervention and 5) biological and environmental influences are embedded in age-graded, history-graded and non-normative contexts. Interestingly, however, the Lifespan Developmental Approach has not been widely disseminated or implemented across the other subspecialties within psychology. In order to address this gap, this three-part symposium was designed to bring together leading experts in the field to discuss emerging issues, present research findings and discuss the utility of the Lifespan Developmental Approach.
The first symposium discussed theoretical and conceptual approaches and included presentations from Willis Overton, PhD; Manfred Diehl, PhD; Ursula Staudinger, PhD; and Jacqueline Lerner, PhD. The second session discussed key methodological issues in the field with presentations from K. Warner Schaie, PhD; Sara Czaja, PhD; and Gregory Smith, PhD. The third and final session covered intervention, modifiability and plasticity with presenters Cameron Camp, PhD; Sherry Willis, PhD; and Boris Baltes, PhD. The three-part symposium series was held at the annual APA conference in Denver, Colorado, in August 2016.