Schaie's cognitive theory
Schaie's cognitive theory is a comprehensive seven-stage model of psychosocial development that extends throughout the human lifespan, challenging traditional theories that primarily focus on childhood and adolescence. Developed by Klaus Warner Schaie in the 1970s, the theory emerged from insights gained through the Seattle Longitudinal Study, which examined cognitive evolution in adults. The model encompasses various stages that highlight motivations and objectives in learning and personal development, beginning with the acquisition stage in early life, where foundational knowledge and skills are obtained.
As individuals transition into young adulthood, they enter the attainment stage, where they start to apply their acquired knowledge. This leads into the responsibility stage, focusing on managing adult responsibilities like career and family. The executive stage follows, characterized by personal fulfillment and mastery of skills. In later adulthood, the reorganization stage involves planning for old age, while the reintegration stage, beginning around age seventy, sees individuals reflecting on their lives and experiences. Finally, the legacy-building stage emphasizes the importance of sharing life narratives and passing on personal legacies. Schaie's model is notable for its flexibility, allowing for variations in individual experiences across these stages.
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Schaie's cognitive theory
Schaie’s cognitive theory is a seven-stage theory of psychosocial development that looks beyond the confines of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood to adopt a lifelong perspective. The framework is also known as Schaie’s stage theory of cognitive development and Schaie’s lifespan cognitive theory. It was developed in the 1970s by the Polish-born American psychologist and gerontologist Klaus Warner Schaie (1928–2023).
The model endeavors to identify and explain the major motivations and objectives that define learning, cognition, and personal development across the human lifespan. It evolved from insights Schaie gained as the founding director and principal architect of the Seattle Longitudinal Study, which launched in 1956 to examine how people evolve and develop throughout adulthood.
Background
Schaie was born in Stettin, Germany (later Szczecin, Poland) in 1928. He emigrated to the United States in 1947 and was naturalized as a citizen in 1953. Schaie was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1952. He undertook graduate studies at the University of Washington, earning his master’s in psychology in 1953 and his doctorate in 1956. Schaie launched the Seattle Longitudinal Study in 1956, initially intending for it to serve as primary research for his doctoral dissertation.
Originally functioning as a study into the impacts of age changes and age differences on adult cognition, the Seattle Longitudinal Study evolved into a complex long-term undertaking. Its focus expanded to include additional research into the factors that affect the cognitive abilities of aging adults, including personality characteristics, lifestyles, living environments and family situations, and thinking styles. Later it also incorporated screenings for early warning signs and risk factors for dementia. Schaie was joined in 1984 by Sherry Willis (1947—), who ascended to the role of study codirector in 2005. Schaie published his final academic works in 2015. The study remained active at the University of Washington after his death well into the 2020s.
Informed by data and insights gained through his leadership of the Seattle Longitudinal Study, Schaie developed his seven-stage cognitive theory in the 1970s, detailing it in publications released in 1977–1978. The model includes multiple developmental stages exclusive to adults, marking a major point of departure from other widely discussed theories of human cognitive development. For instance, the Piaget theory, first forwarded by Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980) in 1936, focuses exclusively on the intellectual development of children. Similarly, the sociocultural theory of cognition developed by Belarusian Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) also places the thrust of its focus on early childhood. Schaie’s cognitive theory ranks among the first widely cited theoretical models ever to focus on the entirety of the human lifespan.
Overview
Schaie’s seven-stage model begins with the stage of acquisition, which spans infancy, childhood, and adolescence. During this phase, people acquire the knowledge, skills, and insights they need for social participation. Importantly, individuals do not generally consider their future personal evolution at this stage as they tend to lack the requisite perspective. Schaie also divides the stage of acquisition into two distinct parts, with the second being the young adult stage, which covers much of adolescent development. During the young adult stage, individuals shift from acquiring essential knowledge and skills to applying them to their own lives with increasing levels of autonomy.
The second phase, the stage of attainment or stage of achievement, generally begins around age nineteen and continues until approximately age thirty. During this stage, individuals apply the knowledge and skills they gained during the stage of acquisition to fully integrate themselves into society as adults. People act on the motivations they developed during the previous stage while gradually amassing the increased levels of responsibility that define the next stage.
The stage of responsibility follows the stage of attainment. During this phase, a person’s cognitive development mainly focuses on building, enhancing, and applying knowledge and skills needed to resolve conflicts and problems arising from adult responsibilities such as career development, personal finance, marriage, and parenthood. Individuals at the stage of responsibility seek to optimize the functions and impacts of these aspects of their lives.
A fourth stage, the executive stage, can overlap with the stage of responsibility or evolve as a standalone state. Occurring during the prime years of adulthood and middle age, individuals master the knowledge sought during the stage of responsibility and apply it toward objectives of personal fulfillment. Some observers liken this developmental phase to an entrepreneur’s career path—if the previous stages marked the entrepreneur’s growth as an increasingly successful employee, the executive stage marks the moment they leave to launch their own venture.
The stage of reorganization begins around the time a typical person retires from the workforce, often in their sixties. During this later-adult phase, individuals turn their primary focus toward planning for their old age and administering the resources they have acquired to provide for themselves for the remainder of their lives.
Upon reaching old age, people evolve into the stage of reintegration. Beginning around age seventy, this stage is marked by several defining characteristicspeople often retreat from making decisions with long-term impacts and tend to avoid dealing with problems or issues that do not directly affect them. Schaie called it the stage of reintegration because individuals at this phase tend to reintegrate previous knowledge, skills, interests, and beliefs back into their lives in novel ways that reflect their advanced age and evolution.
Schaie’s final stage is the legacy-building stage or legacy-creating stage. Occurring as old age advances, people at this phase of their lives reflect on their past and take inventories of their personal possessions, often discarding those they no longer value and passing those they do on to younger loved ones. They also become more interested in relaying narratives about their lives to others, especially children and young people.
Notably, Schaie’s model offers wide latitude in its application, noting that some individuals skip over or do not experience certain stages. In other cases, multiple stages may overlap or lack clearly defined start or end points.
Bibliography
Barrouillet, Pierre. “Theories of Cognitive Development: From Piaget to Today.” Developmental Review, vol. 38, Dec. 2015, pp. 1–12. doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2015.07.004. Accessed 16 Sept. 2021.
Diehl, Manfred and Hans-Werner Wahl. The Psychology of Later Life: A Contextual Perspective. American Psychological Association, 2020.
“K. Warner Schaie.” University of Washington, sls.psychiatry.uw.edu/publications/k-warner-schaie. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.
Kallio, Eeva K. (ed.). Development of Adult Thinking: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cognitive Development and Adult Learning. Routledge, 2020.
Parker, Jonathan and Sara Ashencaen Crabtree. Human Growth and Development in Adults: Theoretical and Practice Perspectives. Policy Press, 2020.
Robinson, Oliver. Development Through Adulthood. 2nd ed., Bloomsbury, 2022.
Schaie, K. Warner and Sherry L. Willis. “The Seattle Longitudinal Study of Adult Cognitive Development.” US National Library of Medicine, 25 Mar. 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3607395. Accessed 16 Sept. 2021.
“Seattle Longitudinal Study.” Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, sls.psychiatry.uw.edu. Accessed 20 May 2024.