The Center for Lifespan Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development: Overview of conceptual agenda and illustration of research activities

Founded in 1981 by the late Paul B. Baltes, the Center for Lifespan Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development has helped to establish lifespan psychology as a distinct conceptual approach within developmental psychology. Recently, the Center has extended its research programme into developmental behavioural neuroscience. Here, we provide an overview of the Center's conceptual agenda, and present two of its seven research projects in greater detail. Work at the Center is guided by three propositions: (1) to study lifespan changes in behaviour as interactions among maturation, learning, and senescence; (2) to develop theories and methods that integrate empirical evidence across domains of functioning, timescales, as well as behavioural and neuronal levels of analysis; (3) to identify mechanisms of development by exploring age-graded differences in plasticity. The Intra-Person Dynamics Project studies the organization of cognitive abilities within individuals of different ages, and investigates lifespan age differences in the plasticity and components of episodic memory performance. The Sensorimotor–Cognitive Couplings Project examines lifespan differences in dynamic dependencies between sensorimotor and cognitive performance. Both projects combine behavioural assessments with methods from developmental neuroscience to delineate age-graded changes in brain–behaviour mappings. Current research in other projects includes: (1) behavioural development in very old age, as assessed in the Berlin Aging Study; (2) the interplay of motivation, affect, and cognition in developmental regulation; (3) behavioural and electrophysiological mechanisms of social interaction from infancy to adulthood; and (4) formal and statistical issues in structural equation modelling, with an emphasis on latent growth curve modelling. Graduate education and research at the Center profit greatly from cooperation with other institutions in Berlin and Potsdam as well as from national and international collaboration.