The life-span perspective.
You will need to find 4 articles located in scholarly journals. Scholarly journal articles are also referred as primary source peer reviewed articles. A scholarly journal article Online Library. What cannot be used for this assignment are web pages, magazines, newspapers, text books, and other books. Finally, current research for our purposes is an article that was published within the last 5 to 6 years.
Remember this is a course on human development so when looking for articles make sure they are related to the subject matter covered in the course. To help in your search here are some of the major areas we covered in this course (these are meant as a guide, not specific topics to find).
Major developmental theories across the lifespan
Nature of geographic, gender, social, cognitive, emotional, and developmental factors during each period of development
Developmental factors that impact one another.
Historical and current trends in development
Current trends which may differentially impact the future development of populations in the United States
Social, and diversity issues related to developmental psychology
With the major areas above in mind, focus on at least two of the following age groups:
Childhood
Adolescence
Adulthood
Older Adults
First, give an overview of each article, including:
Write a 2-paragraph summary for each article. ( Only 4 Article)
Write a 1-2 paragraph analysis and evaluation for each article found.
Make sure to integrate course material in that analysis
Then, write a summary (1-2 pages) integrating what was leaned from the articles reviewed on the chosen age groups as seen from the life-span perspective. Cover the following in that summary:
What similarities did you find in the types of research and what was being studied? What differences did you find?
Based on your course readings, what developmental theories did you find that were applicable?
Explain how the life-span perspective may provide a way of better understanding the research reviewed.
Please use the APA guidelines to include in text citations
The Life-Span Perspective
Name
Course
Institution
Date
Article 1
Summary
In the study by Buttelmann & Karbach (2017), the researchers focus on cognitive flexibility among older adults. Cognitive flexibility develops over time from childhood and increases during adolescence. There is the ability to switch between tasks, perform execution functions (EFs), and manage multiple tasks. There are greater interests and more researches on how to improve cognitive flexibility from childhood to enhance development. Thus, the researchers review past studies and evidence on the interventions to improve cognitive flexibility and training to achieve positive effects. Buttelmann & Karbach (2017) proposed metacognitive training to improve cognitive flexibility.
Plasticity, where there is agility and flexibility, can be learned and is high during childhood when children develop and the environment influences their development milestones. The research on the plasticity of cognitive flexibility provides insight into how people adjust to new tasks and develop problem-solving techniques. Cognitive flexibility is essential for cognitive and everyday performance since it facilitates functioning, but there is a cognitive decline among older adults. Declining cognitive abilities is also a concern as they can influence an individual's perception of their well-being. Cognitive flexibility training is helpful to improve executive functioning in early and middle childhood, and it also improves into young adulthood.
Analysis and evaluation
Research on the plasticity of cognitive flexibility in early and middle childhood provides insights into how cognitive flexibility changes after training and changes in metacognitive ability from an early stage. The research highlights that the parietal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and the striatum are some of the brain areas that affect children's development and their ability to deal with complex problems. The researchers singled out working memory (WM) as one of the main components of executive functions (EFs) that develop into early adulthood. Based on the review, the researchers highlighted that training was shown to improve cognitive flexibility among children significantly.
Article 2
Summary
Cognitive development continues during adolescence to early adulthood, including their reasoning skills, but early cognitive impairment affects cognitive functioning later. In the research by Dickson et al. (2018), the researchers focused on the trajectories of adolescent cognitive functions among youth at-risk for schizophrenia. The study focused on cognitive development for those aged 9 to 16 years, comparing the developmental antecedents of schizophrenia (ASz) and schizoaffective disorder (FHx) with the participants who were well developing or the typically developing peers (TD). When comparing the development paths of the participants, they had cognitive deficits for the ASz and FHx compared to the well-developing study participants. The researchers considered different factors to evaluate the development milestones such as working memory, verbal memory, spelling, word reading, switching executive functions, and observations (Dickson et al., 2018).
There was growth in youth at-risk youth for schizophrenia, but interventions are potentially helpful to improve cognitive functioning. Among youths at risk of schizophrenia, there is an increased risk of cognitive impairment. Schizophrenia affects multiple cognitive domains, and since changes occur throughout young childhood into adulthood, the changes can affect development, but interventions can bring benefits. Adolescence is the transition from childhood into adulthood where there is improvement in cognitive functioning and identifying and evaluating cognitive impairment.
Analysis and evaluation
The results help intervene to improve cognitive functioning among some youths with developmental deficits, but there is a need to undertake cognitive assessments. The study's conclusions flow from the analysis and data supporting the researchers' aim to evaluate the adolescent cognitive functioning among youth at-risk for schizophrenia ad well-functioning youth. Subsequently, they singled out cognitive rehabilitation as one of the interventions that improve cognitive functioning when focusing on specific cognitive deficits at different development phases (Dickson et al., 2018). The developmental deterioration in cognitive functioning follows different patterns. The study shows that identifying whether there is a decline in certain abilities among adolescents is necessary to enhance development and functioning.
Article 3
Summary
In the review article by Dumas (2017), the researchers focused on strategies to slow down cognitive changes in aging, including medication-based strategies. As the population ages, changes are challenging to preserve the cognitive function as people age, yet cognition is an essential component of health. Aging successfully depends on preserving the optimal brain function and cognitive performance, and age is one of the predictors of cognitive impairment. In the studies reviewed participants benefited from the cognitive intervention. Since age is one of the factors affecting cognitive functioning, older people are more likely to require specialized cognitive programs than younger people.
Preventing the deterioration of cognitive function in healthy older adults is partly based on the idea that the degeneration is linked to cognitive and neurobiological changes and not dementia. As such, remediation can prevent cognitive decline in the older adult population. Few studies focused on the effectiveness of the pharmacological intervention to treat cognitive decline, but medications, behavioral modification, and exercises are some of the interventions to maintain cognition. People diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD) have a higher risk of cognitive decline (Dumas, 2017). However, the gonadal steroid estradiol (E2) hormone in women is associated with reduced cognitive decline, improved cognitive functioning, and reduced ris...