Paul B. Baltes (18 June 1939 – 7 November 2006) was a German psychologist whose broad scientific agenda was devoted to establishing and promoting the life-span orientation of human development.
[6] Other substantive topics included work on historical cohort effects, cognitive development, a dual-process conception of lifespan intelligence, and the study of wisdom.
Together with his late wife, Margret Baltes, he proposed a systemic metatheory of ontogeny which characterizes lifespan development as the orchestration of three processes: selection, optimization, and compensation.
Regarding interdisciplinarity, Baltes was engaged primarily in two projects: he chaired (together with Karl Ulrich Mayer) the Berlin Aging Study and, together with the Sociologist Neil Smelser, he was co-editor-in-chief of the 26-volume International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Elsevier) which appeared in 2001.
[6] The study of development traditionally focused almost exclusively on the changes occurring from conception to adolescence and the gradual decline in old age.
The current view reflects the possibility that specific changes in development can occur later in life, without having been established at birth.
This belief clearly emphasizes that all stages of the life span equally contribute in the regulation of the nature of human development; no age period holds supremacy over another.
As individuals move through life, they are faced with many challenges, opportunities, and situations that “give direction, force, and substance to their development”.
By multidimensionality, Baltes is referring to the fact that a complex interplay of factors, both endogenous and exogenous, influence development across the lifespan.
[10] The fact that the term puberty encompasses such a broad range of domains illustrates the multidimensionality component of the overarching concept.
[11] 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.
[8][11] In the end, neuronal changes to the limbic system and prefrontal cortex which are associated with puberty lead to the development of self-regulation, and the ability to consider the consequences of one's actions.
Baltes argues that factors which contribute to gain or loss are not in equal proportions but adjust according to systematic age-related shifts.
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[16] 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.
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.
[17] 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).
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.
[6] This is similar to the perspective of historical embeddedness, which has been shown earlier in the paper to pertain heavily to the study of adolescent development.
The idea that development is a lifelong process is very beneficial to society because it may help in the identification of qualities or problems that are distinctive in a particular age period.
If these qualities or problems could be identified, specific programs could be established such as after-school interventions that enhance positive youth development (PYD).
[24] PYD emphasizes the strengths of youth, promoting their development physically, personally, socially, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.
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.”[25] Substance use and problem behaviors were also reported as either prevented or reduced.
[26] In the 1990s, the Minnesota Family Investment Plan (MFIP) was implemented by the government to accomplish two goals: to increase employment and reduce poverty.
[26] MFIP achieved these goals by providing financial incentives to attend work and introducing mandatory employment-focused activities.
[6][27] 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.