The life-span perspective is an approach to development that evaluates change and stability in an individual’s physical, cognitive, and psychological attributes over their lifetime. It takes into consideration the different contexts in which development occurs such as family, culture, peers, school, neighborhood etc. This perspective encompasses five characteristics- Development is Multidirectional , Developement is Multicontextual , Development is Multicultural , Developement is Multidisciplinary and Development is Plastic .

1) Development Is Multidirectional: According to this characteristic of life span perspective , individual can move forward or backward in terms of development. That means individuals can increase or decrease their performance on certain skills over the course of time. For example a child at age 8 may become better at math than a child at age 10 due to increased practice but then the same child at 16 may be worse than his peer due to lack of interest or motivation (Santrock & Halonen 2020). This demonstrates how some aspects of development are multidirectional instead of always progressing in one direction.