According to the question, what the normative approach ask regarding the lifespan is “what is normal development”
In the 20th century, large numbers of children with different age group were studied by normative psychologists in order to determine norms (age) of when most of the children attain specific developmental milestones across the three domains (physical, cognitive and psycho-social).
Further Explanation
However, children grow at different rate. The age related averages can be used as guidelines to differentiate children in the age group to determine the approximate age they should attain specific normative events, also known as developmental milestone such as writing, dressing, color naming, crawling, and starting puberty.
Ordinarily, not all developmental milestones are universal, which means people have different experience across culture. However, biological milestone are universal, for example puberty.
Social milestones are not universal. For example, the age at which children start going to school is not the same across culture. Social milestones even affect some people in some culture.
For example, children from developed countries begin school early. They start school mostly from age 5 or 6 but it is not like that in most developing nation. For example, In Nigeria, most children often attend school at advanced age.
KEYWORDS:
- social milestones
- normative approach
- normal development
- psychologists
- culture