Chapter 13: Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Adulthood PDF

Chapter 13: Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Adulthood ================================================================= Adulthood --------- Transitioning to Adulthood - Emerging Adulthood: Ages 18-25 - Most widely recognized marker: First full time job - Economic i...

Chapter 13: Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Adulthood ================================================================= Adulthood --------- Transitioning to Adulthood - Emerging Adulthood: Ages 18-25 - Most widely recognized marker: First full time job - Economic independence - Taking responsibility for oneself - Other cultures use marriage as an identifier 5 Key Features of Emerging Adulthood - Identity exploration: Continuing to explore identity and find best fit - Instability: Frequently moving jobs and trying to establish themselves - Self-focused: Freedom to do what they want to do - Feeling "in-between": Being labelled an adult, but not feeling like it - Optimistic: Feeling positive about their futures Trends - Age of childbirth has increased from 1970 to now - Women are getting educated and finding jobs before having children - Depressive symptoms typically improve - Self-esteem also improves - Family wealth and hard work are most important to determining success - Young people classified as adults: - Forced to grow up early through non-normative events - Feeling like an adult, being more matured - Range of responsibilities in family/job (teen pregnancy) - Full-time employed (working with older individuals) - Less financially dependent on others Transitioning to College - Wider network, less personal - Increasing emphasis on assessment and achievement - Independence and freedom - Increased stress and depression than previous generations Physical Development -------------------- Physical Performance - Peaks before age 30 - Between 19-26 Physical Development - Higher mortality rates in early adulthood than during adolescence - Unhealthy habits increase - Inactivity, diet, obesity, substance abuse - 27% of adults obese in 2011, 40% in 2020 - **SNAP subsidizes unhealthy foods, increasing disease risk** Obesity and Weight - Heredity: animal and twin studies - Leptin: The anti-obesity hormone - Stored in fat cells, signals brain to stop eating - Set point: Weight maintained when one isn't making an effort to gain or lose weight - Environmental factors - Availability of food - Sociocultural factors (low vs high income) - Dieting: mixed results - Exercise is the most effective in losing/maintaining weight - 30 minutes of aerobic exercise per day - Only 1/5 adults Substance Use - Binge drinking: Consuming 5+ drinks - Excessive binge drinking: 10+ drinks - More common among collegiate males - In 2010, 27% of college students engaged in binge drinking - Correlated with negative outcomes and behaviors - Class absence, injuries, police encounters, unprotected sex - Peaks at age 21-22 Cognitive Development --------------------- Piaget Stages - Formal Operational Stage - Qualitatively, adults think the same way as adolescents - Quantitatively, adults have more knowledge - Adults increase typically their knowledge in a specialty area - Postformal Thought? - Reflective, relativistic, contextual - Different contexts/situations require different thinking - Metacognition: thinking about thinking - Provisional: Absolute truth is rare; answers to problems are temporary steps towards better ones - Realistic: Solutions aren't simple and might need to be a compromise - Understanding: Moods and feelings can cloud judgements and decisions Goals, Motivation, and Regulation - Time in life where achievement is a high priority - Degrees, jobs, relationships - Effectively setting and achieving goals is a skill - Requires executive function and executive attention! - Motivation and Grit - Push to do your best - Work hard to reach goals, no matter how long - Overcoming challenges - Passion Careers and Work - Career Mystique: Ingrained cultural belief that hours of hard work through adulthood will lead to status, security, and happiness - Has increasingly become a myth for middle-income occupations - 55% of adults are less productive due to work related stressors - Low salaries, lack of advancement opportunities, uncertain job expectations, long hours Chapter 14: Socioemotional Development in Early Adulthood ========================================================= Emotions - Temperament: An individual's behavioral style and characteristic emotional responses - In adulthood, better ability to control and regulate emotions - Changes in adulthood - Fewer mood swings - Less risk-taking behavior - More responsible - Links between childhood temperament and adult personality - Easy Temperaments -\> Better Adjusted - More Childhood Inhibition -\> Less Assertive - Ability to control emotions continues throughout life - Continuity from childhood to adulthood; influences how peo0ple respond to different emotional situations Attachment - Attachment: Appears in infancy, involves relationship with the primary caregiver - In adulthood, attachment switches to a romantic partner as a secure base - Attachment in childhood predicts attachment to romantic partners in adulthood - Secure: Positive views of relationships, get close to others, and not stressed about their relationships - Tend to avoid one-night stands - Enjoy sexuality in committed relationships - Avoidant: Hesitant about getting involved in romantic relationships. Once in a relationship, tend to distance themselves from their partner - Lower levels of sexual satisfaction - Higher levels of depressive and anxious symptoms - Anxious: Demand closeness, less trusting, more emotional, jealous, and possessive - Strong ambivalence toward romantic partner - More depressive/anxious symptoms - More likely to engage in infidelity Erikson - Intimacy vs Isolation: Young Adulthood - Intimacy: Finding oneself in a secure connection to another person - Requires commitment to that person - Isolation: Failing to find intimacy with others - Loneliness, lack of deep social connections - Most adults have a "best friend" - 65% have known their best friend for 10+ years - Gender Differences - Women have more close friends and use more self-disclosure - "Talking companions" - Male activities with friends involve activities, especially outdoors - Keeping one's distance while sharing - Social connections are important for maintaining intimacy Attraction - First Impressions: 100ms exposure time to unfamiliar faces is sufficient to form an impression about their attractiveness - Somewhat accurate judgement: in a slower context, they have similar responses - Familiarity and similarity: Characteristics are often reflected in romantic partners - Consensual validation: Our own attitudes and behavior are supported and validated when someone else's attitudes and behavior are similar to our own - Shared beliefs are important in relationships - Physical attractiveness: Predicts husbands' marital satisfaction more than wives' marital satisfaction - Matching Hypothesis: We prefer those who are more attractive, but in reality, we choose someone who is close to our own level of attractiveness Sternberg's Triangle of Love - Three Components: - Passion: Physical sexual arousal - Intimacy: Feelings of closeness and self-disclosure - Commitment: Marriage or exclusive, lifelong cohabitating relationships - Types of Love: - Infatuation: The presence of only Passion - No intimacy or commitment; one-night stand - Affectionate Love: The presence of Intimacy and Commitment - No Passion; likely a good friend or family member - Compassionate love - Romantic Love: Combines Passion and Intimacy - Involves sexual desire and closeness without commitment - Passionate Love - Consummate Love: Includes all three components - Ideal state of love Lifestyle Choices - Single Adults: more people are choosing to not be married - More flexible career, location choices - Negative stereotypes - Cohabiting: living together in a sexual relationship without getting married - Also on the rise, some plan to never marry - Prejudice from older generations - Issues with property rights and basic legal protections - Marriage: 72% in 1960 to 48% in 2019 - Average age of marriage is increasing - True globally, not just in the US Parenting - Myth and Realities - Myth: Having a child will save a marriage - It will only get more stressful - Myth: The child will think, feel, and behave like their parents - Genes do not determine personality; experiences and environment do - Myth: Parenting is instinctual and requires no training - There are no such thing as motherly instincts - Age of childbirth is increasing - Birth control has led to fewer children - Women are more active professionally in careers - Men are spending more time caring for children - Larger role of professional childcare Divorce - Main reasons: Grew apart, arguments, extramarital affair, lack of respect, domestic violence - Most divorces happen within 5-10 years - There are many challenges that married couples face - Six Common Pathways for exiting divorce - The Enhancers: Became more competent, well-adjusted, and self-fulfilled - 20%; mostly females - The Good-Enough: Average; some strengths/weaknesses - Largest group - The Seekers: Motivated to find new mates as soon as possible - 40% - The Libertines: More time in singles bars and casual sex - Then grow to want a stable relationship - The Competent Loners: Well-adjusted, self-sufficient, socially skilled - 10% - The Defeated: Problems before divorce then got worse Summary - Young Adulthood is a diverse time of coming into one's own - Cross-cultural, contextual factors influence what this looks like for each person - College-driven demands on mental and physical health should be noted - Habits formed during this time of life are difficult to shake - Substance abuse is common and can have life-long consequences - No new cognitive stages? - Post-formal thought - Consistency in attachment & temperament - New 'styles' - Intimacy v. Isolation - Connections to other people vs social loneliness - Single, married, cohabitating lifestyle choices change over time! - Children and divorce are key events that shape a person's life during this time Middle Adulthood: Physical and Cognitive ======================================== Midlife - Life expectancy today: 78 - Age expectancy in 1900: 47 - People are continuing to live longer - 12% of US population is over 65 years - Middle Age or Middle Adulthood: 40-45 to 60-65 years old - Typically, of working age, before retirement Rectangularization - Population pyramids are becoming less triangular (exponential growth) and more rectangular (population leveling off) - People are having less children, and the elderly are living longer Basic Themes - 50-year-olds are healthier, more active, and more productive when compared to previous generations - Physical skills are on the decline, but still intact - Expanding responsibilities with career and families - Reach/maintain satisfaction in career - Major life changes (illness, job loss, deaths) - Physical changes - Sarcopenia: loss of muscle mass - Lifestyle habits (substances), diet, obesity, etc. - Eyesight loss - Difficulty viewing close up (loss of accommodation) - Increase in blind spot (blood supply diminishes) - Hearing loss in 50% of 50-year-olds - High-frequency sounds lost first - Chronic Disorders: Slow onset, long duration - Arthritis - Chronic stress - Overproduction of corticosteroids (e.g., cortisol) - Decrease in number and effectiveness of white blood cells - Ethnic differences - Increased risk of high blood pressure and stroke in African Americans - Increased risk of diabetes among Latinos Cognition - Fluid Intelligence: Ability to reason abstractly; to perceive and manipulate information - Reasoning, learning new things, think abstractly to solve problems - Decreases with age (peaks in early adulthood) - Crystallized Intelligence: Accumulated information and verbal skills (learning experiences) - Prior learning and past experiences, factual information - Increases with age (consistent increase over time) Seattle Longitudinal Study - Has studied cognition in adults since 1956 - Several cohorts (at least 3 generations) - Look at the same people over time - Measured various changes in cognitive processes - Inductive reasoning, perceptual speed, verbal memory - Begins decreasing from 50s-60s - Later born cohorts have better fluid and crystallized abilities - Educational attainment - Increasing professional occupations - Better health care Stage Theory of Cognition - Life-span perspective that extends past Piaget limits - Reflect different uses of intellect as the adult continues to age past the formal operational stage - Childhood and Adolescence: Acquisitive - Young Adulthood: Achieving - Middle Age: Responsible - Young-old: Reorganizational - Old-old: Reintegrative - Oldest-old: Legacy Creating Expertise - Specialized knowledge - A form of crystallized intelligence - Not necessarily related to general intelligence - More middle-aged adults (vs. younger adults) show expertise in their chosen field - Requires time and experience to acquire - Can buffer age-related declines in cognition - Experts vs. Novices - Thought processes are more automatic, intuitive, effective - Use shortcuts and strategies - Notice different aspects of a situation Middle Adulthood: Social and Emotional ====================================== Erikson's Stages - Generativity vs Stagnation - Generativity: Desire to leave legacy with the next generation - Biological: Offspring - Parental: Nurturing and guidance - Work: Mentoring young colleagues - Cultural: Conserving aspects of culture (traditions) - Shape the future experiences of others - Stagnation: Sense that one has done nothing, will leave nothing behind Midlife Crisis - Levinson (1978): Found that all of his therapy patients were undergoing midlife crises - Young vs old - Destructive vs constructive - Masculine vs feminine - Attached vs Separated - 40s: Reassessing and recording the truth about adolescence and early adulthood - Looking back on adolescence and early adulthood - Only a minority of adults experience a midlife crisis - Often exaggerated in the US Life Events Approach - Life events approach: The idea that crises occur when major life events push someone towards generativity or stagnation - Events: Marriage, widowhood, new job, accident, birth of child - Mediating variables: Physical health, intelligent, personality, family support, income - Adaptation process: Adults change when they recognize the threat and use coping strategies to overcome that obstacle - All of this is influenced by life-stage context and sociohistorical context - Getting divorced at 25 is much different than getting divorced at 50 - Getting divorced in 1950 is different than getting divorced in 2024 - Depends on place, culture, social context, etc. Stressors - Daily stressors: health, home maintenance, work, economy, physical appearance, etc. - Show better emotional regulation skills to mediate responses to stress - Middle aged adults with better self-control as children = less signs of aging - Gender differences: Women show higher stress to challenges in relationships - Women more willing to get professional help, talk to a friend - Men more willing to self-soothe or refuse to admit a problem Personality - Personality: set of emotional qualities, ways of behaving, etc. that makes a person different from other people - Stabilizes in the 20s - Galton (1884) Lexical Hypothesis: Personality can be explained by sampling language - Measure using adjectives that best describe people and behavior - The Big Five - Five components of personality that operate independently - Openness: Imaginative or practical - Live longer, better well-being, better responses to stress - Conscientiousness: Organized or disorganized - Higher GPA, work success, higher marital satisfaction - Extraversion: Sociable or reserved - More social, more relationship satisfaction, less sleep problems - Agreeableness: Easygoing or ruthless - Generosity/altruism, satisfaction in romance, lower dementia risk - Neuroticism: Anxious or calm (emotional stability) - Live shorter, worse health, lower relationship satisfaction, drug dependency - Factor Analysis - Using many questions that can be clustered into groups Personality Over the Lifespan - Costa McCrae: Longitudinal study of college-educated adults from age 20-96 - Showed stability in all 5 factors over adulthood - Eichorn: Less stability in the short term - More-group oriented: women from college to middle age - Career focused during college were more family focused later on - People get more conscientious in midlife - Conclusions: - Overall general stability, but minor changes within each type - Most change during age 20-40 - Personality accumulates over time - Each day you live represents a smaller and smaller slice of your total life - Settle into a particular lifestyle - Big shifts still occur (marriage/job changes) - Change tends to be in a positive direction - More experience = more confident, responsible, calm, socially mature Criticisms of the Big Five - Only accounts for 56% of personality traits - Not theory-driven or empirical - More based on agreeing or disagreeing with word associations - Based on lexical hypothesis: Verbal descriptions of the self are often subject to social desirability bias - Still useful in understanding personality variations among individuals Marriage at Midlife - Most married couples are satisfied - Over time, build solid foundation and security - More time to spend together, strengthen connection through mutual activities - Selection effect: Those who are still married in midlife stayed together because they had a good relationship - Divorce can be less intense in early adulthood - May feel like betrayal, loss of commitment and trust - More amicable/mutual decision to end the relationship - Some people face financial instability - Having children is the most common reason for delaying eventual divorce Challenges in Middle Adulthood - Empty Nest Syndrome: A decline in marital satisfaction after the children leave the home - May be a myth; for some parents, marital satisfaction increases after child rearing - Increase in quality time - Can be liberating; time to pursue own interests and leisure - Refilling of empty nest is becoming a common occurrence - Revolving door syndrome/boomerang phenomenon - Intergenerational Relationships - Caring for their children and their aging parents - Squeezed between generations - 40% of adults care for their aging parents - More commonly, daughters - Added stress with disability - Can be ambivalent, both a joy and a burden - Feels nice to help, but adds stress and frustration - As many, or more, continue supporting their grown children - Increase in the number of adults moving back home during COVID Summary - Historically, middle aged adults are healthier than ever - Modest physical decline - Vision, hearing, bone density, muscle strength - Expanded responsibilities - Family, job, illness - Cognitive changes - Shift from fluid to crystallized intelligence - Generational shifts - Different strategies/demands - More knowledge and expertise - Erikson - Generativity vs Stagnation - Biological, parental, work, cultural - Levinson: Crisis of conflicts - Are midlife conflicts common? - May be overstated - Life-events approach - Specific moments create stress - How you cope depends on personal and surrounding factors - Stress - Managing stress is important to maintaining health and happiness - Childhood skills translate to adult coping mechanisms - Personality - Personality is relatively stable, but can change across lifespan - Predictive of health, social, cognitive outcomes - Changes in family relationships - Increase in demands and responsibilities - Divorce is rarer, but can be difficult - Multigenerational care (parents and children) - Empty nest syndrome Late Adulthood: Physical Development ==================================== Late Adulthood - Late Adulthood = 60s to 125 years old (large range) - Some developmentalists divide this period into 3 substages - Young-old are aged 65 to 74 - Old-old are aged 75 or more - Oldest-old are aged 85 or more - Mostly women that live independently in communities - Important to consider functional age, the person's actual ability to\ function, rather than age - Inability to walk, talk, etc. Life Expectancy - Life Span: Upper boundary of life - Max = 120-125 years - Improvements in medicine, nutrition, exercise, lifestyle since 1900 - Also decreases in infant deaths - Life Expectancy: the number of years that the average person born in a particular\ year will probably live. - Monaco: highest at 90 years - US ranks 15^th^ at 78 years - Women typically live longer than men - Careers, gender expectations, behaviors, etc. Biological Theories of Aging - Evolutionary Theory: Natural selection has not eliminated many harmful conditions and non-adaptive characteristics in older adults - Evolution only cares about reproductive fitness, which does not happen in\ late adulthood - Cellular Clock Theory: cells can divide a maximum of about 75 to 80 times, and that as we age our cells become less capable of dividing - Telomeres shorten with age after each DNA replication - Then, we start losing functional DNA at the end of chromosomes - Free Radical Theory: Unstable oxygen molecules, free radicals, ricochet around the cells, damaging DNA and other cellular structures, leading to a range of disorders - Mitochondrial Theory: Decay of mitochondria (tiny bodies within cells that\ supply essential energy for function, growth, and repair). - Free radicals damage Mitochondria - Linked to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's - Hormonal Stress Theory: Prolonged exposure to stress elevated stress hormones for longer periods disease (cancer, hypertension, diabetes, etc.) Decline - Brain loses 5-10% of its weight from age 20-90 - Decrease in total brain volume - Shrinkage of neurons - Fewer synapses - Shorter axons - However, very little actual neuron loss, just diminished connections - Shrinking prefrontal cortex - Decrease in cognitive function - Slower motor behavior - Declining neural circuits in prefrontal cortex affects: - Complex reasoning tasks - Working memory - Episodic memory tasks - Neural decline stronger for retrieval than encoding - Decreased connectivity between brain regions - Increased aerobic fitness in late adulthood -\> greater hippocampus volume - Neurogenesis can occur in adulthood in the hippocampus/olfactory bulb Physical Appearance and Movement - Wrinkles and age spots are the most noticeable changes - People get shorter with aging due to bone loss in their vertebrae - Weight typically drops after we reach age 60; likely because we lose muscle (sarcopenia) - Loss of muscle and increase in fat from age 25 to 75 - Adequate mobility is an important aspect of maintaining an independent and active lifestyle in late adulthood - Maintains muscle mass and prevents fat accumulation Exercise - Sedentary (low fitness) individuals are 3x more likely to die - Men who exercise regularly at age 72 were more likely to reach 90 years of age - Major takeaway: Cardiovascular fitness is especially important to maintain longevity and prevent chronic disease/aging - Better immune system, cell functioning, mental health, cognition, etc. Weight and Obesity - Being overweight does have negative consequences throughout life - However, there may be a protective effect of a little extra weight in older age - Recovering from surgery or managing disease - Still evidence suggesting that obesity related to increased risk of death Vision Changes - Poorer vision in the dark: Muscles in the eyes that allow for light adjustment decline - Glare: Greatest decline beyond 75 years - Harder to see, longer to recover (dark adaptation) - Night driving: glare, dark adaptation, diminished contrast, and slower reaction time - Cause problems with night driving, especially in a car-dependent society - Giving up a car is a loss of independence and prevents them from traveling to the store or to the doctor. Diseases of the Eye - Cataracts: a thickening of the lens of the eye that causes vision to become cloudy, opaque, and distorted - 30% of 70-year-olds - Glaucoma: damage to the optic nerve because of the pressure created by a buildup of fluid in the eye - 1% of 70-year-olds - Can be treated with eyedrops - Macular Degeneration: deterioration of the macula of the retina, which corresponds to the focal center of the visual field - Loss of vision in the middle of the visual field - Leading cause of blindness in older adults Sensory Decline - Hearing Impairments: Degeneration of cochlea causes legal deafness - 63% of 70+ adults - Hearing aids and cochlear implants can be used - Smell and Taste: Loss begins at about age 60 - Smell shows greater impairment - Touch and pain: Decline in touch sensations and sensitivity to pain - Greater impairment in lower extremities than upper extremities Health Problems - 84% of US adults 65yrs+ have 1+ chronic conditions - 60% of adults 65-74 die of cancer or cardiovascular disease - Cancer is the leading cause of death Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) - Instrumental ADLs - Difficulties performing everyday household tasks (cooking, cleaning) - Common in advanced old age - Basic ADLs - Difficulties performing essential self-care activities (eating, getting to the toilet) - Relatively rare until the old-old years - Require full time help or nursing home care - ADLs get worse after 75+ years of age - Agency in Care Environments - Many older adults live in nursing homes to get help - Feelings of control and self-determination are extremely important for health and survival - Having control over their daily choices like eating, activities - People who feel more dependent are likely to die earlier Challenges of Elder Care - Rising costs of healthcare/nursing homes - Lower quality: 1/3 of facilities are seriously deficient - Too few medical professionals - Alternatives like home care are high in demand Summary - People are living longer and can have healthier lives: Lifestyle is critical - Multiple processes drive aging - Substantial changes in body composition - Bone, Muscle = strength, speed, mobility, falling risk - Specific vision and hearing loss - Agency & Care: Activities of Daily living (ADLs) Late Adulthood: Cognitive Development ===================================== Cognition - Multidimensionality: Many different facets to cognition - Attention, memory, language, executive function, etc. - Multidirectionality: Dimensions can decline, stabilize, or some improve - Cognitive mechanics: The hardware of the mind and the neurophysiological architecture of the brain (fluid intelligence) - Speed and accuracy, attention, visual and motor memory - Declines - Cognitive Pragmatics: Culture-based software programs of the mind - Reading, writing, professional skills, language comprehension, knowledge of self and life skills (crystallized intelligence) - Increases Cognitive Mechanics - Speed of processing decreases with age - Often due to a decline in brain and CNS functioning - Varies among individuals - Decreased processing linked to falls, dementia - Impacts driving safety - Exercise helps maintain or improve speed of processing - Selective attention: focusing on specific tasks while ignoring others - Generally, decreases with older age - Divided attention: Concentrating on more than one activity - More difficult for older adults - Sustained attention: Vigilance on one task - Simple tasks show little impairment in older adults - Memory - Explicit: (aka declarative) Memory for facts/experiences - Remembering what to buy at the store - Implicit: automatic procedures/skills/routines - Remembering how to push the shopping cart - Implicit \> Explicit for older adults - Semantic: Ability to recall facts and specific information - Older adults take longer to retrieve semantic memories - Episodic: The ongoing events of daily live - Older adults perform worse than younger adults - The older the memory, the less accurate - Reminiscence bump: memory for one's 20s and 30s - Working memory: Maintaining and using information - Declines from 65-89 - Decline occurs primarily in episodic and working memory, not in semantic memory or implicit memory - Decline in perceptual speed causes working memory decline - Strategies are linked to higher independence - Executive Function - Older adults less likely to engage in cognitive control (controlling attention, reducing interfering thoughts, and being cognitively flexible) - Prefrontal cortex shrinks with age - More difficulty in self-inhibition, difficult to switch tasks - Certain mental activities help the maintenance of cognitive skills - Reading books, crossword puzzles, lectures, concerts - Reduce cognitive decline and lower Alzheimer's Continuing to Work - Good health, a strong commitment to work, and a distaste for retirement linked to continued employment into old age - Cognitive ability is best predictor of job performance in older adults - Reasons for not retiring - Not enough money, slower aging - Average age of retirement: 62 for women, 65 for men - Adjust best if they are healthy and active, have adequate income, are better educated, social networks, life satisfaction, etc. Mental Health - Major depression: a mood disorder in which the individual is deeply unhappy, demoralized, self-derogatory, and bored - Less common among older adults than younger adults - Common predictors: poor health or disability, low social support, previous depression - 18-25% of individuals who commit suicide in the U.S. are 65 years of age or older - Dementia: any neurological disorder in which the primary symptoms involve a deterioration of mental functioning - Inability to recognize people/places - Cannot care for oneself - 20% of individuals over 80 - Alzheimer's Disease: Dementia characterized by a gradual deterioration of memory, reasoning, language, and eventually, physical function - Divided into early-onset (before age 65) or late-onset (age 65+) - Involves a deficiency in the neurotransmitter acetylcholine - 60-80% of dementia cases caused by Alzheimer\'s - More common in women - Characterized by neural atrophy and abnormal by-products of that atrophy, such as amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. - Neurons decay and wither away, 1^st^ in the hippocampus (memory) - Neurofibrillary tangles: Twisted fibers - Amyloid plaques: Dense deposits of proteins in blood vessels - Alzheimer's treatment - Cholinesterase inhibitors for mild to moderate Alzheimer's -- reduces some symptoms - Increases acetylcholine, which is important for memory and thinking - NDMA antagonists for moderate to severe Alzheimer's - Blocks toxic effects of excess glutamate - Parkinson's Disease: Form of dementia: chronic, progressive disease characterized by muscle tremors, slowing of movement, and facial paralysis - Inadequate production of dopamine - Treatments: L-dopa and deep brain stimulation Summary - Cognitive skills are diverse - Many show declines with age (fluid intelligence / cognitive mechanics) - Some improve or stay stable (crystallized intelligence / cognitive pragmatics) - Active cognitive behaviors promote and maintain health - Work and retirement are common in older age - Challenges in meeting needs - Mental Health challenges - Depression, dementia (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's) Late Adulthood: Social and Emotional Development ================================================ Erikson - Integrity vs Despair: Life Review - Looking back on life and evaluating earlier stages - Integrity: finding satisfaction and pride in life - Despair: Previous stages resolved in a negative way - Doesn't need to be entirely positive -- may have regrets - Important not to dwell, can't turn back time - Use them as a way for personal growth - Help individual prepare for death and process fear - Reminiscence Therapy: discussing past activities and experiences - Improves mood and helps adults attain a higher sense of integrity - Largest improvements for depressed individuals - Important to process the past Happiness in Old Age - Activity Theory: more active and involved older adults are more satisfied with their lives - Maintaining middle adulthood roles into late adulthood - After retirement, find a new hobby or purpose - Socioemotional selectivity theory: motivation changes in response to narrowing of time left - Older adults focus on making the most of present life - Social priorities shift to being with closest attachment figures (family) - Most older adults have smaller networks - Selective Optimization with Compensation Theory: successful aging depends on: - Selection -- choose specific goals to focus on/commit to - Optimization -- investment of time and energy to maintain performance in some areas through continued practice and use of new technologies - Compensation -- activate new strategies to counteract losses Personality - Openness - Declines prior to death - Conscientiousness - 'optimal' aging, positive affect, life satisfaction, overall well-being - Less cognitive decline - Lower risk of dementia - Extraversion - Agreeableness - Neuroticism - Difficulty in executive function - Higher frailty - Depression Self-Esteem - Deteriorating physical health - Negative societal attitudes: ageism - Socially ignored, left out of family decisions - Left out of medical conversations - Not hired, discriminated against - Positive self-perceptions of aging live 7.5 yrs longer than those with negative perceptions Family and Marriage - Majority of US adults age 65+ are married - 27% of older adult women were widowed - Retirement alters a couple's lifestyle - Change in household roles, caring during sickness - Married people are usually happier, live longer than those who are single - 80% of older adults have living children - Daughters tend to be more involved than sons Aging - Normal aging: psychological functioning peaks in early midlife, plateaus in 50s and 60s, modestly declines through 80s, sharp decline prior to death - Pathological aging: stronger decline in late adulthood; mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's, other chronic diseases - Successful aging: maintain physical, cognitive, and socioemotional functioning for longer than most people - Diet, active lifestyle, mental stimulation, positive coping skills, good\ relationships, absence of disease or good treatment - Perceived control, self-efficacy Summary - Erikson: despair versus integrity - Looking back on our lives - Happiness & Health - Staying active - Adapting to changing circumstances - Focusing on the things that matter the most - Personality impacts aging and lifestyle - Family becomes increasingly important - Aging successfully through positive life choices (diet, lifestyle, relationships, etc.)