Papers in this symposium evaluate the usefulness of ideas associated with the life-span view for enriching or expanding issues, theory, research, and interventions pertinent to change processes during infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Lipsitt emphasizes that infants be studied in transaction with their context in order for scientists to appreciate the role of infant development across the rest of life. He calls for greater appreciation of the impact of the biocultural and historical parameters of the context, and makes a plea for the study of process as opposed to static traits. Gray and Ramsey present follow-up data from the subjects in the Early Training Project, an educational intervention begun in 1962 among 3- to 4-year-old children from low income, southern black families. Although some effects of the early intervention on late adolescent/early adult intellectual function were evident, variables continually present in the subjects’ particular sociocultural milieu are seen as having canalized children into a relatively limited set of behaviors. Rockwell and Elder emphasize the role of the familial and sociocultural context in their study of problem behavior among children and adolescents born in Berkeley, Calif, during the Great Depression. Effects of deprivation varied in relation to children’s age, sex, and family statuses. Labouvie- Vief argues that Piaget’s theory of cognitive development can be seen to have important implications for development in adulthood. If one considers the application of formal logic to the ecologically valid problems occurring throughout the adult years, one can conceptually transcend a narrow organismic versus contextual dualism. Finally, Kuhn, in commenting on the preceding papers, notes that, first, they suggest that any stage or phase of development must be considered within the framework of the rest of the life-span; second, the papers argue that developmental phenomena must be examined in the social and historical contexts within which they occur.

Keywords:
Adolescence, Adulthood, Child development, Context, Infancy, Intervention, Life-course, Life-span
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© 1982 S. Karger AG, Basel
1982
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