ADULT DEVELOPMENT

Adult Development

Adult Development

Alternative Predictors of Adult Cognitive Complexity

The notion of age-related progression in adult cognitive development is encouraging in view of the prevailing model that depicts aging as a period of decline in cognitive functioning. However, the literature on adult development in health practitioner field is rich with arguments that chronological age may not be a good predictor of development due to the great interindividual variability and the increasing diversity and complexity of adult life.

Over the last two decades, social changes have had great influences on the life-course of adults. With the increasing divorce rate, family structural change, and the increasing number of women going into the work force, a variety of new patterns of adult life have emerged. We are observing, for example, a steady increase in the prevalence of the single-parent family. As Demetriou (1998) pointed out, an increasing diversity in adult life due to the inconsistent emerging patterns among different socioeconomic groups. In one example, they noted that we may encounter both teenage and middle-aged mothers with newborn infants, newlyweds in their late teens as well as newlyweds in their fifties and sixties. As a result, chronological age has lost its relevance as an independent variable for explaining adult development.

Life Events and Adult Development

Research on the psychological effects of life events has been prolific over the last 20 years. Two approaches to life event research have dominated studies on adults. The major approach views life events as necessarily involving change, and thus stress, and examines the psychological and psychiatric consequence of stressful life events. Life events are defined as “objective experiences that disrupt or threaten to disrupt an individual's usual activities, causing a substantial readjustment in that individual's behavior” (Schlinger 2008). Researchers using this approach have devised life-event scales and generated a large number of empirical studies.

In the later 70's, the notion of change per se as the major stressor was supplemented by the results of studies indicating that undesirability, unpredictability, magnitude and time clustering of events were better predictors of psychological disturbance. Recently, some researchers have shifted their focus to the impact of small events, or daily “hassles”, and positive events, and emphasized the interaction between events and their context.

Researchers in the field of life events conclude that the relationship between life events and psychological functioning is influenced by mediating variables such as enduring personality traits and ...