Stages of Human Development: The Life-Span Approach and Related Applications and Comparisons

Two and a half decades ago Paul B. Baltes (Dev Psychol 2.1(5):611–626, 1987) suggested a life span approach for the human development stages. In this paper we examine these theoretical assumptions based on a theory of the health state proposed in previous publications starting from the paper by Janssen and Skiadas (Appl Stoch Models Data Anal 11(1):35–49, 1995) on the The Health State Function of a Population. The applications refer to the estimation of the health state for USA (2000) males and females and for eight countries (USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Japan). Another study refers to 35 countries (Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA) for the time period (1998–2002). The related findings for the health state are compared with results for the chess, golf, and athletics performance along with comparisons with characteristic psychological parameters and it is demonstrated that the health state findings are in agreement with these results. Another important study by Laura T. Germine, Bradley Duchaine, Ken Nakayama (Cognition 118(2):201–210, 2011) concludes that cognitive development and aging meet. They suggest a classification of cognitive development which is in accordance to our studies related to a health state function developed from population and death data sets. Even more we are able to define the periods of the life span by estimating the health state of the population and the first, second and higher order differences of the health state. Shu-Chen Li, Ulman Lindenberger, Bernhard Hommel, Gisa Aschersleben, Wolfgang Prinz, and Paul B. Baltes (Psychol Sci 15(3):155–163, 2004) with their paper on: Transformations in the Couplings Among Intellectual Abilities and Constituent Cognitive Processes Across the Life Span, provide adequate support in explaining the interrelations of the cognitive development and the health approach. Finally we give Tables classifying the life span to special life periods as is adolescence, adulthood and old age periods and provide comparisons with the periods proposed by the Erikson, Sullivan and Piaget schools. The related theory and applications along with the estimation programs are given in several publications and in the web at http://www.cmsim.net and http://www.cmsim.net/id27.html .