Cognitive Development and the Life Course: Growth, Stability and Decline

This chapter explores the integration of life course and developmental approaches to the understanding of cognitive growth, maintenance, and decline over the life span. We employ the idea of event-centered growth models as an essential contribution that at once brings more contextual factors into developmental models of cognitive function (CF) and shows how the life course approach can contribute to an understanding of a phenomenon that is otherwise viewed as a developmental (or aging) process. After introducing the concepts, theories, and methods necessary for understanding the main focus of our attention—namely within-person change in CF—we apply this framework to four major areas where our approach can potentially lead to new insights and understandings: (1) early child cognitive development and the transition to school; (2) the transition to adulthood and midlife, in which CF in adolescence leads to major influences on educational achievement, occupational success and CF in adulthood; (3) the potential for changes in CF during midlife; and (4) transitions in later life (e.g. health events and labor force transitions),and how theoretically CF has a role to play as both consequence and cause of these transitions. The approach we propose can be applied to the study of a wide array of developmental phenomena where life course events and transitions play a role.