Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmuehlestrasse 14, Box 21, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland.
University Research Priority Program "Dynamics of Healthy Aging", University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Psychol Res. 2023 Oct;87(7):2120-2137. doi: 10.1007/s00426-023-01804-0. Epub 2023 Feb 21.
Goals constitute an important construct in developmental psychology. They represent a central way in which individuals shape their development. Here, we present two studies on age-related differences in one important goal dimension, goal focus, that is, the relative salience of the means and ends of goal pursuit. Extant studies on age-related differences in adults suggest a shift from focusing on the ends to focusing on the means across adulthood. The current studies aimed to expand this research to encompass the entire lifespan including childhood. The first cross-sectional study included participants spanning from early childhood into old age (N = 312, age range: 3-83 years) and used a multimethodological approach comprising eye tracking, behavioral, and verbal measures of goal focus. The second study investigated the verbal measures of the first study in more detail in an adult sample (N = 1550, age range: 17-88 years). Overall, the results do not show a clear pattern, making them difficult to interpret. There was little convergence of the measures, pointing to the difficulties in assessing a construct such as goal focus across a large range of age groups differing in social-cognitive and verbal skills.
目标是发展心理学中的一个重要结构。它们代表了个体塑造自身发展的一种主要方式。在这里，我们呈现了两项关于目标焦点这一重要目标维度的年龄相关差异的研究，即目标追求的手段和目的的相对显著性。现有关于成年人的年龄相关差异的研究表明，成年人的目标焦点从注重目的转向注重手段。当前的研究旨在将这一研究扩展到包括童年在内的整个生命周期。第一项横断面研究包括从幼儿到老年的参与者（N=312，年龄范围：3-83 岁），并采用了包括眼动追踪、行为和语言目标焦点测量在内的多方法学方法。第二项研究在一个成年样本（N=1550，年龄范围：17-88 岁）中更详细地研究了第一项研究的语言测量。总的来说，结果没有呈现出明显的模式，因此难以解释。这些测量方法之间的一致性很小，这表明在评估目标焦点等构建在具有不同社会认知和语言技能的广泛年龄组中具有一定的难度。
