How Do Adults Develop?

We have all seen adults who still act like adolescents. Watching them can be funny, or it can make us feel uncomfortable. What does it really mean to be an adult? For many years, developmental psychologists focused on childhood and adolescence, as if most important aspects of development occurred by age 20 and then people did not change anymore. In recent decades, researchers working in a wide range of fields have demonstrated that important physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive changes occur throughout adulthood. Thus adulthood has become an important topic for study. Beginning at the end of adolescence, lasting through old age, and concluding with death, adulthood makes up most of our life span.