Toward a life-span perspective on the study of message production

The study of message production has been largely context bound and temporal ly constrained. Although we have significant insight into how and why young adults produce messages, we know less about how young children become prof icient message producers. We are also comparatively ignorant about how the aging process affects message production and how individual communicators a lter their message production across contexts and across the life span. In this article I explore the implications of the adoption of a life-span pers pective on message production, discuss the assumptions of the life-span dev elopmental perspective, and outline possible applications of this perspecti ve to the study of message production, fn particular, I argue that adoption of a life-span perspective calls for further explication of extant theorie s on message production and provides opportunities for theory testing.