Paul Baltes

Paul B. Baltes (18 June 1939 – 7 November 2006) was a German developmental psychologist who researched life-span development and aging. He is credited with developing theories about lifespan-development, successful aging, and wisdom, and the "selective optimization with compensation theory" of compensating decline in aging by focussing on strengths. He has been described by American Psychologist as one of the most influential developmental psychologists.

Biography Paul B. Baltes was born in Saarlouis, Germany. He is credited with developing theories about lifespan and wisdom, the selective optimization with compensation theory, and theories about successful aging and developing. He received his doctorate from the University of Saarbrücken (Saarland, Germany) in 1967. After, Baltes spent 12 years at several American institutions as a professor of psychology and human development before returning to Germany in 1980. He was Director of the Center of Lifespan Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Professor of Psychology at the Free University of Berlin, and Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. At the Max Planck Institute for Human Development he founded the Berlin Wisdom Project and became a leader in the scientific study of wisdom. Baltes later became the director of the Max Planck International Research Network on Aging.

He was a founding member of the European Academy of Sciences, a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, and a member and vice-president of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina. Paul Baltes also became a member of the Order Pour le mérite for scientists and artists and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

As to research and theory, Baltes was interested in advancing a life-span view of human ontogenesis that considers behavioral and cognitive functioning from childhood into old age using a family of perspectives that together specify a coherent metatheoretical view on the nature of development.

Life-Span Developmental Psychology

Overview Life-span psychology can be defined as the exploration of biological, cognitive, and psychosocial changes and constancies that occur throughout the course of life. It has been presented as a theoretical perspective, proposing several fundamental, theoretical, and methodological principles about the nature of human development. An attempt by researchers has been made to examine whether research on the nature of development suggests a specific metatheoretical worldview. Several beliefs, taken together, form the “family of perspectives” that contribute to this particular view. Baltes argues there are seven key features which affect human development across the life span, namely: (1) development occurs across one's entire life, (2) multidirectionality and multidimensionality, (3) development as growth and decline, (4) the role plasticity plays in development, (5) the influence of socio-cultural condition on development, (6) the interactions of age-graded, history-graded, and nonnormative historical influences on development, and (7) the multidisciplinary nature of human development. The types of morphological changes associated with puberty include the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics, alterations in height and weight, fluctuations in hormonal levels, along with several other changes. Psychological changes during adolescence involve a broad range of experiences individuals encounter over this period of dynamic changes; including the development of advanced cognitive faculties such as abstraction and other adult cognitive processes, new emotions, along with other psychosocial changes. The fact that the term puberty encompasses such a broad range of domains illustrates the multidimensionality component of the overarching concept. The concept of puberty is also multidirectional as individual domains may both improve or decline in levels of effectiveness. Self-regulation is one domain of puberty which undergoes profound multidirectional changes during the adolescent period. During childhood, individuals have difficulty effectively regulating their actions and impulsive behaviors. Scholars have noted that this lack of effective regulation often results in children engaging in behaviors without fully considering the consequences of one's actions. Adolescents may also be forced to sacrifice their reaction times toward processing stimuli in favour being able to fully consider the consequences of their actions. The notion of plasticity emphasizes that there are many possible developmental outcomes and that the nature of human development is much more open and pluralistic than originally implied by traditional views; there is no single pathway that must be taken in an individual's development across the life span. Plasticity is imperative to current research because the potential for intervention is derived from the notion of plasticity in development. Undesired development or behaviors could potentially be prevented or ameliorated.

Applications of Plasticity Neuronal plasticity, or the capability of the brain to adapt to new requirements, is a prime example of plasticity stressing that the individual's ability to change is a lifelong process. Recently, researchers have been analyzing how the spared senses compensate for the loss of vision. Without visual input, blind humans have demonstrated that tactile and auditory functions still fully develop. A superiority of the blind has even been observed when they are presented with tactile and auditory tasks. This superiority may suggest that the specific sensory experiences of the blind may influence the development of certain sensory functions, namely tactile and auditory. One experiment was designed by Röder and colleagues to clarify the auditory localization skills of the blind in comparison to the sighted. They examined both blind human adults’ and sighted human adults’ abilities to locate sounds presented either central or peripheral (lateral) to them. Both congenitally blind adults and sighted adults could locate a sound presented in front of them with precision but the blind were clearly superior in locating sounds presented laterally. Currently, brain-imaging studies have revealed that the sensory cortices in the brain are reorganized after visual deprivation. These findings suggest that when vision is absent in development, the auditory cortices in the brain recruit areas that are normally devoted to vision, thus becoming further refined.

A significant aspect of the aging process is cognitive decline. The dimensions of cognitive decline are partially reversible however, because the brain retains the lifelong capacity for plasticity and reorganization of cortical tissue. Mahncke and colleagues developed a brain plasticity-based training program that induced learning in mature adults experiencing age-related decline. This training program focused intensively on aural language reception accuracy and cognitively demanding exercises that have been proven to partially reverse the age-related losses in memory. It included highly rewarding novel tasks that required attention control and became progressively more difficult to perform. In comparison to the control group, who received no training and showed no significant change in memory function, the experimental training group displayed a marked enhancement in memory that was sustained at the 3-month follow-up period. These findings suggest that cognitive function, particularly memory, can be significantly improved in mature adults with age-related cognitive decline by using brain plasticity-based training methods.

Historical embeddedness The perspective of historical embeddedness is composed of two main ideas: the idea that a relationship exists between an individual's development and the socio-cultural setting around them, and also how this setting evolves over time. During the time of adolescence, Baltes believed the socio-cultural setting in which an individual develops plays a distinct role in the development of their personality. This has been exemplified in numerous studies, including Nesselroade and Baltes’, who showed that the level and direction of change in adolescent personality development was influenced as strongly by the socio-cultural settings at the time (in this case, the Vietnam War) as age related factors. The study involved individuals of four different adolescent age groups who all showed significant personality development in the same direction (a tendency to occupy themselves with ethical, moral, and political issues rather than cognitive achievement). Similarly, Edler showed that the Great Depression was a setting that significantly affected the development of adolescents and their corresponding adult personalities, by showing a similar common personality development across age groups. Baltes’ theory also states that the historical socio-cultural setting had an effect on the development of an individual's intelligence. The areas of influence that Baltes thought most important to the development of intelligence were health, education, and work. The first two areas, health and education, significantly affect adolescent development as a healthy child, who is educated effectively, will develop a higher level of intelligence. The environmental factors, health and education, have been suggested by Neiss and Rowe to have as much effect on intelligence as inherited intelligence. The second idea of historical embeddedness is that this socio-cultural setting evolves over time. Therefore, during adolescence, when intelligence is influenced significantly, advances in the areas of health, education, and type of work available to adolescents will show an effect that persists into adulthood. This effect of intelligence not only changing with time (as people age), but also varying by the historical time period a person developed in, was shown in a study by Schaie on adults only ten years apart in age. This study showed that intelligence levels change by cohort, or historical time.

Contextualism as a Paradigm Contextualism as a paradigm is Baltes’ idea that three systems of biological and environmental influence work together to influence development: age-graded, history-graded, and nonnormative influences. Baltes wrote that these three influences operate throughout the life course, their effects accumulate with time, and, as a dynamic package, they are responsible for how lives develop. PYD emphasizes the strengths of youth, promoting their development physically, personally, socially, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Interventions must be conducted with the needs and preferences of the participants kept in mind however; the individuals’ choice, values, and culture must always be considered.

Big Brothers/Big Sisters is a positive youth development program targeted in the community domain that demonstrates substantial behavioural outcomes for youth. This program sought to promote positive identity and competence by creating a strong bond with a healthy adult. These healthy adults, or mentors, committed a minimum of several hours, two to four times a month for a year with a youth that was carefully assigned to them based on their background, preference, and geographic proximity. Youths in this program improved in “school attendance, parental relations, academic performance, and peer emotional support.”

In the 1990s, the Minnesota Family Investment Plan (MFIP) was implemented by the government to accomplish two goals: to increase employment and reduce poverty. Baltes argues that as individuals advance through life they are increasingly faced by age-related deficits which place limits on their cognitive and behavioral resources. To deal with these limits placed on domains, individuals will begin to invest resources into particular styles and behaviors that are deemed adaptive to the new constraints. This specialization in particular domains and styles will increase the ability in those particular faculties that are deemed more adaptive to growing age-related deficits.