Rethinking age in developmental research: a discursive psychology perspective

Age occupies a central role in developmental research yet is typically treated as a stable individual variable explaining change or continuity in behavior. In this position article, we argue that such a treatment overlooks how age itself is socially organized and interactionally consequential. Drawing on discursive psychology, we advocate for a stronger integration of discursive frameworks into developmental research, not by abandoning age as an analytic focus but by examining how age becomes relevant in context. This entails a shift toward an emic perspective in which development and aging are understood as interactional resources rather than background explanations for action. We illustrate this argument through a discursive analysis of everyday interaction, showing how age emerges as a locally managed and contested category. Rather than chronological age or age-group membership, it is the situated work through which age categories are invoked, resisted, and ratified that becomes analytically salient. From this perspective, phenomena commonly described as “age effects” can be reconceptualized as outcomes of situated category work. We conclude that integrating discursive psychology into developmental research supports linking short-term interactional processes with longer term developmental patterns.

©American Psychological Association, 2026. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. The final article is available, upon publication, at: https://doi.org/10.1037/qup0000369