Dev Psych 4

Questions

85 age and up is fastest growing US segment and 2% of the population High T cell activity predicted better physical functioning and survival Sporadic Alzheimer is due to epigenetic processes Age differences in implicit memories are much smaller than explicit memory Older adults perform far worse than younger adults on item pair memory supports associative memory deficit Older adults generate smaller numbers of strategies compared to younger adults

Feminization of Poverty

A trend in which women who support themselves or their families have become the majority of the adult population living in poverty, regardless of age and ethnic group. Compared to young people, midlife adults seem to adjust more easily to divorce. Marital breakup often severely reduces women's standard of living, contributing to the feminization of poverty.

Returning Students

Adults returning to college and graduate school are more often women. Returning students must cope with a lack of recent practice at academic work; negative aging, gender and ethnic stereotypes; and demands of multiple roles like taking care of kids. Social support from family/friends and institutional services can help returning students. Further education results in enhanced competencies, new relationships, intergenerational contact, and reshaped life paths.

Problem vs Emotion Coping

Adults who effectively reduce stress move flexibly between problem centered and emotion centered techniques depending on the situation. Effective problem coping reduces emotional stress while emotion coping helps people face problems more calmly to generate more solutions. When midlife adults surmount a highly stressful event, they report lasting benefits, interpreting trauma as self-growth.

Secondary Aging

Age related declines due to hereditary defects and environmental influences such as poor diet, lack of exercise, disease, drug abuse, and stress

Associative Memory Deficit

Age related difficulty creating and retrieving links between pieces of information, like 2 items or an item and its context

Psebycusis

Age-related hearing impairment beginning around age 50 with a noticeable decline in sensitivity to high frequency sounds, which gradually extends to all frequencies. Inner ear structures deteriorate through natural cell death or reduced blood supply. The first hearing loss at age 50 is decline in sensitivity to high frequency sounds. Ability to distinguish sounds occurring close succession recedes.

Big 5 Personality Adulthood

Agreeableness and conscientiousness increase into middle age, while neuroticism declines, and extroversion and openness to experience do not change or decrease slightly. Although adults change in overall organization and integration of personality, they do so on a foundation of enduring disposition like a job or romantic relationship. Tend to work for most countries

Expressed Hostility

Angry outbursts, rude, disagreeable behavior and expressions of contempt/disgust predict greater coronary artery plaque, buildup and heart diseases. Type A people become increasingly recognizable during the busiest years of career. Repeatedly suppressing overt anger or ruminating about past anger provoking events is also associated with high blood pressure and heart disease.

Problem Centered Coping

Appraising situation as changeable, identified the difficulty and decided what to do about it

Presbyopia

Around age 60, the lens of the eyes loses its capacity to adjust to objects. As the lens loses elasticity, the eye rapidly becomes farsighted between ages 40 and 60.

Activities of daily living ADLs

Basic self care tasks required to live on one's own, such as bathing, dressing, and eating.

Functional Age

Biological - comparison of biological health to the general population of an individual's age Psychological - Social

Macular Degeneration

Blurring and eventual loss of central vision due to breakdown of light sensitive cells in the macula or central region of the retina. Hearing impairments are more common than visual impairments, with decline in speech perception having the greatest impact on life satisfaction. Older people report lower self efficacy due to hearing impairments

Skeleton

Bones broaden with age, but their mineral content declines so they become less dense. Women's reserves of bone minerals is lower than men's to begin with. And following menopause, the favorable impact of estrogen on bone mineral absorption is lost. Loss of bone strength causes the disks in the spinal column to collapse, decreasing height and are more vulnerable to fractures.

Midlife Gender Identity

Both men and women became more androgynous in middle adulthood, due to a combination of social roles and life conditions. This rise in androgyny seems to have spread to other age periods in response to cultural changes favoring gender equality.

Ecological Niche

Causes stability being in an area that matches your personality type reinforces it or choose new environments that support it Behavioral geneticsms Sandar Scar and gender environment correlations

Cataracts

Cloudy areas in the lens of the eye that increase from middle to late adulthood, resulting in foggy vision and eventual blindness

Burnout

Condition in which long term job stress leads to mental exhaustion, a sense of loss of personal control, and feelings of reduced accomplishment

Normative Crisis Theory

Criticism Age isn't the only thing that structures our experiences in life Rely on normative that assumes everyone goes through these stages

Cross Sectional and Longitudinal

Cross sectional Repeated lasting effects More likely a problem when things are done together

Fluid vs Crystallized Midlife

Cross sectional studies show that crystallized intelligence increases steadily through middle adulthood, whereas fluid intelligence begins to decline in the 20s. Midlife rise in crystalized abilities makes sense because adults are constantly adding to their knowledge and skills at work, at home, and leisure activity. Many crystallized skills are practiced daily.

Daily Stressors

Daily stressors plateau in early to mid-adulthood, and then decline as work and family responsibilities ease. Midlife gains in emotional stability and confidence in handling life's problems lead to increased effectiveness in coping with stressors. But some midlifers are overwhelmed by intense stress and indicated by the rise in suicide rates during middle age.

Executive Function

Declines with age, working memory diminishes, inhibition and flexible shifting of attention become more challenging People highly experienced in attending to critical information and performing several tasks at once, show smaller declines in inhibition and task switching with age.

Depression and Climateric

Depressive episodes rise during climacteric, though women who have a history of depression, who are experiencing highly stressful life events, or harbor negative atittudes toward menopause/aging are at greatest risk. Hormonal changes elevate depressive symptoms. With the final menstrual period, as hormone levels stabalize, the incidence of depression diminishes. Women with a pervious history of depression are more likely to continue feeling depressed after menopause.

Sinnot

Difference in qualitative Younger adults remember both relevant and irrelevant while adults only remember relevant

Hayflic Limit

Different species have different numbers of duplication

Intensity of Sexuality

Diminishes in midlife due to physical changes of the climacteric. Both genders take longer to feel aroused to reach orgasm.

Glaucoma

Diseases in which poor fluid drainage leads to build up of pressure within the eye damaging the optic nerve. Progresses without symptoms and leading cause of blindness.

Vision

During 40s, reading small print is common due to thickening of the lens combined with weakening of the muscle that enable eyes to adjust to nearby object. New fibers appear on the surface of the lens, compressing older fibers to create a thicker structure. The vitreous develops opaque areas, reducing the amount of light reaching the retina. Gradual loss of rods/cones in the retina, neurons in the optic nerves, decreased blood supply to the retina due to degeneration of retinal blood vessels.

Telomeres

Each of chromosomes that aren't carrying real genetic material, a little bit of telomere drop off Cells can only duplicate a certain amount of times

Skin

Epidermis, outer protective layer where new skin cells are constantly produced Dermis, middle supportive layer, consisting of connective tissue that stretches and bounces back, giving skin elasticity Hypodermis, inner fatty layer that adds to the soft lines of the skin As we age, the epidermis becomes less attached to the dermis, fibers in the dermis thin and lose their elasticity, cells in both the epidermis and dermis decline in water content, and fat in the hypodermis diminishes.

Generativity vs stagnation

Erikson's Theory, midlife conflict which is resolved positively if the adult can integrate personal goals with the welfare of the larger social world. The resulting strength is the capacity to give and guide the next generation.

Culture's belief in the species

Erikson, the conviction that life is good and worthwhile, even in the face of human Armageddon, is a major motivator of generative action, which has improving humanity as its goal.

Skipped Generation

Family structure in which children live with grandparents but apart from parents Grandparents relationship with grandchildren depend on proximity, number of grandchild sets, sex of grandparent and child, and in-law relationships. In low SES families and in some ethnic groups, grandparents provide essential child bearing assistance. Middle aged adults reassess their relationship with aging parents, often becoming more appreciative. Mother, daughter relationships tend to be closer than other parent child ties. The more positive the history of the parent, child and the greater the need for help, the more help exchanged.

Schaie's Seattle Longitudinal Study

Five factors gained in early/middle adulthood; verbal activity, inductive reasoning, verbal memory, spatial orientation, and numeric ability, include both crystallized and fluid skills. Confirms midlife is a time when complex mental abilities are at their peak. Perceptual speed decreased from the 20s to late 80s showing how cognitive processing slows as people get older. Late in life, fluid factors show greater decrements than crystalized factors.

Rheumatoid Arthritis

Form of arthritis in which autoimmune responses leads to inflammation of connective tissue, particularly the membranes that line the joints, resulting overall aching, inflammation, and stiffness. Leads to deformed joints and often serious loss of mobility

Osteoarthritis

Form of arthritis that involves deteriorating cartilage on the ends of bones of frequently used joints, leading to swelling, stiffness and loss of flexibility.

Vascular Dementia

Form of dementia that develops when a series of strokes leaves areas of dead brain cells, producing step by step degeneration of mental ability with each step occurring abruptly after a stroke. Heredity contributes indirectly, though high blood pressure, heart diseases and diabetes too, more men than women are affected.

Changes in Mental Skills

General slowing of central nervous system functioning underlies nearly all age-related declines in cognitive performance. The decrease in basic processing, while substantial after age 45, may not be greater enough to affect many well practiced performances until late in life. Adults often compensate for cognitive limitations by drawing on their cognitive strengths. As people discover they're no longer as good as they once were at certain tasks, they accommodate by shifting to activities that depend less on cognitive efficiency and more on accumulated knowledge. Fluid skills remain plastic

Primary Aging

Genetically influenced age related declines in the functioning of organs and systems that affect all members of our species and occur even in the context of good health. Conditions that are strongly related to age does not mean they are entirely caused by aging.

Factors related to cognitive maintenance and change

Healthy, mentally active people are likely to maintain their cognitive abilities to advanced old age. Diverse chronic health conditions are associated with cognitive declines. Terminal Decline, acceleration of cognitive functioning prior to death.

Problem Solving Late Life

Hypothetical problem solving declines in late adulthood. In everyday problem solving, older adults are effective as long as they perceive problems as under their control and as important. Older people make faster decisions about health than younger people and often consult others.

Gene point of view

If you have a species that cannot reproduce taking up resources from those who can reproduce, kill off those that cannot

Pilanesberg National Park

In Crogar nation park, over population, transferred some of them to planesberg national park Musth, The male elephants were going crazy and wrecking havoc due to their extremely high testosterone A weaker male takes on/picks a fight with a stronger male, weaker male loses then they one out of Mutsh Planesrburg only had young adults, no older males to put them in place Requires social interaction, biological predictable normal processes but requires social interaction to function properly

Muscle Fat Make Up

Increase in body fat and loss of lean body mass (muscle and bone). Men accumulate more fat on the back and upper abdomen, women around the waist and upper arms. Muscle mass declines gradually in the 40-50s, due to atrophy of fast twitch fibers, responsible for speed and explosive strength.

Lifelong Learning

Increasing numbers of older people continue their education through university courses, community offerings. Participants acquire new knowledge and skills, new friends, a broader perspective on the world, and an image of themselves as more competent.

Cognitive Functioning Late Adulthood

Individual differences in cognitive functioning are greater in late adulthood than at any other time of life. Older adults can make the most of their cognitive resources through selective optimization with compensation. Personal goals increasingly emphasize maintaining abilities and preventing losses

Fluid

Inductive Reasoning Intellectual skills that largely depend on basic information processing skills, ability to detect relationships among visual stimuli, speed of analyzing information, and working memory capacity. Influenced less by culture than by conditions in the brain and by learning unique to the individual. Fluid intelligence goes down with age because your mental processing goes down with age. Taking in new info and manipulating it

Crystalized intelligence

Intellectual skills that depend on accumulated knowledge/experience, good judgement and mastery of social conventions. Abilities acquired because they are valued by the individual's culture.

Emotion Centered Coping

Internal, private and aimed at controlling distress when little can be done about a situation.

Glass Ceiling

Invisible barrier to advancement up the corporate ladder, faced by women and ethnic minorities due to Limited access to management training and prejudice against women who demonstrate leadership qualities. Many women and minorities further their careers by leaving the corporate world and starting their own businesses

Wisdom

Involves extensive practical knowledge, ability to reflect and apply that knowledge in ways that make life more bearable and worthwhile, emotional maturity, and altruistic creativity. When age and relevant life experience are combined, more older than young people rank among the wise. Having faced and overcome adversity appears to contribute to late life wisdom.

Language Processing Late Life

Language comprehension changes little in late life. Age related losses occur in two aspects of language production: retrieving words from long term memory and planning what to say and how to say it in everyday conversation. Older people compensate by speaking more slowly and using shorter sentences. Are advantaged in narrative competence.

Vaillant's Adaptation to Life

Levinson interviewed 35-45 year olds, Vaillant did a longitudinal study on well educated people. Adults in their late 50-60s became keepers of meaning/generativity. As people approach the end of the middle age, they focus on longer-term, less personal goals, such as the state of relationships in their society. They become more philosophical, accepting the fact that not all problems can be solved in their lifetime.

Hormone Treatment

Low daily doses of estrogen. Hormone therapy comes as estrogen replacement therapy or estrogen plus progesterone/hormone replacement therapy since progesterone reduces the risk of cancer. Highly successful at countering hot flashes, vaginal dryness, bone deterioation. Associated with an increase in heart attack, stroke, blood clots, breast cancer, and death from lung cancer.

Fetal life

Makes more neutrons than you actually need/use - kill them off before you're even born

Memory Late Adulthood

Memory failure increases with age, especially on explicit memory tasks, which require controlled, strategic processing. Recall of context, source and temporal order of episodic events declines. Automatic forms of memory, such as recognition and implicit memory, suffer less.

Anger and Rage

Men who displayed Type A behavior pattern, extreme competitiveness, ambition, impatience, hostility, anger were more than twice as likely as Type Bs to develop heart diseases. Later studies failed to confirm these outcomes. Type A is actually a mix of behaviors, only one or two of which affect health. Hostility is the toxic ingredient of type A

Gender differences in Hearing

Men's hearing tends to decline earlier and more rapidly than women's, a difference associated with cigarette smoking, intense noise and chemical pollutants in male occupations.

Problem Solving and Creativity

Middle aged adults displayed continued growth in practical problem solving, largely due to gains in expertise. Creativity becomes more deliberately thoughtful and often shifts from generating unusual products to integrating ideas, and concern with self-expression to more altruistic goals. Problem solving that requires people to size up real-world situations and analyze how best to achieve goals that have a high degree of uncertainty

Midlife Career Changes

Midlife career changes typically involves leaving one life of work for a related one. Radical career change often signals a personal crisis. Among blue collar workers, midlife career shifts are seldom freely chosen.

Midlife Job Satisfaction

Midlife people seek to increase the personal meaning and self direction of their work lives. Job satisfaction increases at all occupational levels, more so for men than for women. Both personal and workplace characteristics influence older workers' engagement in career development. In companies with a more favorable age climate, mature employees report greater self-efficacy and work commitment

Women Attitude Toward Menopause

Most do not want more children and are thankful to be freed from worry about birth control. And highly educated women usually have more positive attitudes toward menopause than those with less education.

Health and Fitness Midlife

Most older adults rate their health favorably and have a high sense of self-efficacy about protecting it. Risk of dietary deficiencies increases in late life. Exercise, even when begun in late adulthood, is a powerful health intervention Though sex activity declines, usually among women, most married older adults report continued sexual enjoyment

Frequency

Most research on sexuality in midlife focuses on hetero married couples Frequency of sexual activity among hetero couples tends to decline in midlife but for most the drop is modest. Overwhelming majority of married and cohabiting couples are sexually active. Sexual Activity is far more typical than dramatic change. Couples who have sex often in early adulthood continue to do so in midlife. Sex is more likely in the context of a happy intimate bond, and couples who have sex often probably view their relationship more positively.

Gender and Aging

Negative stereotypes of aging, which lead many midlife adults to fear physical changes are more likely be applied to women. People often rate them as less attractive and having more negative personality changes than midlife men. Even though many women in midlife say they feel assertive and confident. The end of woman's capacity to bear children contributes to negative judgements of physical appearance.

Brain Changes in Midlife

Neuron loss occurs through the cerebral cortex, with greater shrinkage in the frontal lobes, prefrontal cortex, and corpus callosum. The cerebellum and the hippocampus also lose neurons. The brain compensates by forming new synapses and to a limited degree, generating new neurons. The automatic nervous system functions less well and releases more stress hormones.

Research Challenges

Normative Age Graded Influences: Events strongly related to aging like skills that develop at a particular age or social expectations. Don't work for research because not everything is strongly associated with age as the social clock is less determinant now Have to specific which segments of adults are being studied

Memory strategies

Older adults less often use them resulting in decreased recall of studied information. But training, improved design of tasks and metacognitive knowledge enable older adults to compensate for age related decrements. Age related changes in memory vary widely across tasks and individuals as people use their cognitive capacities to meet the requirements of their everyday worlds.

Reminiscence Bump

Older adults' heightened autobiographical memory for events that occurred between ages 10-30. Contrary to what older people often report, remote memory is not clearer than recent memory. Remote memory is best for events that occurred between ages 10-30, a period of heightened autobiographical recall called the reminiscence bump

Stagnation

Once people attain certain life goals like marriage and kids, they may become self-centered. Through lack of interest in young people, focus on what they can get from others, and little interest in being productive at work/bettering the world. Highly generative people appear especially well-adjusted.

Aging

People age at biological different rates, making chronological age an imperfect indicator of functional age. Dramatic gains in average life expectancy confirm that biological aging can be modified by environmental factors, including improved safety and medicine. In the 1990s the gender gap in life expectancy has narrowed in industrialized nations. Because men are at highest risk for death, they reap larger generational gains from positive lifestyle changes.

Compression of Morbidity

Public Health goal of reducing the average period of diminished vigor before death as life expectancy extends. Result of medical advances and improved socioeconomic conditions; further gains will depend on reducing negative lifestyle factors. In late life men continue to be more prone to fatal disease and women to disabling conditions.

Reproductive Changes in Men

Quantity and motility of sperm decreased from the 20s on, and quantity of semen diminishes after age 40. Sperm production continues throughout life. Testosterone declines are less so in healthy men who continue to engage in sex. Reduced testosterone plays a major role in diminishing blood flow to and changes in connective tissue in the penis so more stimulant is required for an erection

Prospective Memory

Recall that involves remembering to engage in planned actions in the future. Adults to better on event based than on time based prospective memory. In everyday life, they compensate for declines in prospective memory by using external memory aids.

Cardiovascular, respiratory, and immune system changes

Reduced capacity of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems become apparent in late adulthood, making high physical activity more taxing The immune system functions less effectively in late life, increasing the risk of illnesses and making autoimmune responses and stress induced infection more likely. Timing of sleep shifts toward earlier bedtime and morning wakening.

Working Out

Regular Exercise offers physical/psychological advantages, making it worthwhile for sedentary middle-aged people to begin working out. Developing a sense of self-efficacy and having access to convenient, safe and attractive exercise environments promotes physical activity.

Cognitive Reserve

Reorganizing of brain areas devoted to cognitive processes and richer synaptic connections, resulting from the complex cognitive activities of better educated people, which give the aging brain greater tolerance for injury before it crosses the threshold into mental disability. Better educated people may develop cognitive reserve that increases the aging brain's tolerance to injury. Diverse environmental factors, including fatty diet, smoking, depression, heart disease, and head injuries increase the risk of Alzheimer's.

Kinkeeper

Role assumed by members of the middle generation, especially mothers, who take responsibilities for gathering the family for celebrations and making sure everyone stays in touch Most midlife parents adjust well to launching children, especially if positive parent-child relationships are sustained, but adult children who are off time in development can prompt parental strain. Low SES parents are able to give less tangible/intangible support to their adult children, and they must divide it among more offspring. As children marry, midlife parents especially moms become kinkeepers.

Self-Acceptance, Autonomy, and Environmental Mastery

Self Acceptance: More than young adults, midlife adults acknowledge and accept both their good and bad qualities and felt positively about themselves and life Autonomy: Midlife adults saw themselves as less concerned about others' expectations and evaluations and more concerned with following self-chosen standards Environmental Mastery: Midlife adults saw themselves as capable of managing a complex array of tasks easily and effectively. Midlife is a time of increased comfort with the self and independence.

Midlife crisis

Self-doubt and stress that prompt major restructuring of the personality during the transition to middle adulthood. Characterizes the experience of only a minority of adults. Levinson viewed it as inner turmoil while Vaillant saw few midlife crisis but more slow and steady change. Most turning points are positive, involving fulfilling a dream or learning something good about oneself and rarely resemble midlife crisis. Even negative turning points generally lead to personal growth. Life regrets are associated with less favorable well-being. But regrets can also serve a positive function if people mull over what went wrong in the past and based on new insights, take whatever corrective action is possible. The few midlifers who are in a crisis typically had early adulthoods in which gender roles, family pressure, or low income severely limited their ability to realize personal goals.

Dementia

Set of disorders occurring almost entirely in old age in which many aspects of thought and behavior are so impaired that everyday activities are disrupted

Hardiness

Set of three personal qualities; control, commitment, and challenge that together, help people cope adaptively with stress bought on by inevitable life changes. Influences the extent to which people appraise stressful situations as manageable which predict health promoting behavior, seeking social support and fewer illness symptoms. High hardy people are likely to use active problem centered coping strategies in situations they can control over emotion centered. Key ingredient is a generally optimistic, determined approach to life. Experiencing modest levels of life time adversity seems to foster a sense of mastery, generating in people the hardiness to overcome future stressors. Adults with no history of adversity respond less optimally when faced with them.

Osteoporosis

Severe age related bone loss which greatly magnifies the risk of bone fractures. Affects 10% of people age 50, and older, primarily women. Adequate calcium and vitamin D, weight bearing exercise, resistance training, and bone strengthening medications can prevent.

Midlife friends and siblings

Sibling contact and support decline from early to middle adulthood, but many middle aged sibling feel closer. Past and current parental favoritism still influences the quality of sibling bonds In midlife, friendships become fewer and more selective. Men's friendships continue to be less intimate than those of women, who have more close friends.

Speed of cognitive processing

Slows with age. Deteriorating neuronal connections, due to myelin breakdown, reduce reaction time. Another approach suggest that older adults experience greater loss of information as it moves through the cognitive system, resulting in slower processing. As processing speed slows, people perform less well on memory, reasoning and problem solving tasks, especially fluid ability items. But other factors also predict age related cognitive performances.

Neurofibrillary Tangles

Structural change in the cerebral cortex associated with Alzheimer's diseases in which bundles of twisted threads appear that are the product of collapsed neural structures and that contain abnormal forms of protein called tau

Amyloid Plaques

Structural change in the cerebral cortex associated with Alzheimer's diseases in which dense deposits of amyloid develop, surrounded by clumps of dead nerve and glial cells.

Skin Sun exposure and gender differences

Sun exposure hastens wrinkling, loosening and spotting, individuals with a lot of outdoors time will look older. Because the dermis of women is not as thick as that of men and estrogen loss accelerates thinning and decline in elasticity, women's skin ages more quickly

Instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs)

Tasks necessary to conduct the business of daily life and also requiring some cognitive competence such as telephoning, shopping, cooking, cleaning. With age, growing number of older adults experience physical declines evident in difficulties carrying out ADLs and IADLs

Possible Selves

Temporal dimension of self concept, future oriented representations of what one is striving for and what one is attempting to avoid We may rely less on social comparisons in judging our self worth and more on temporal comparisons, how we are doing in relation to what we had planned Because the future no longer holds limitless opportunities, adults preserve mental health by adjusting their hopes and fears. To stay motivated, they must maintain a sense of unachieved possibility, they still manage to feel good about themselves. Those with balanced possible selves made greater self rated progress toward attaining their self relevant goals.

Sandwich generation

Term to describe middle aged adults who must care for multiple generations above and below them at the same time. The burden of caring for ill or frail parents falls most heavily on daughters, though the sex difference declines in later life. Parental caregiving has emotional and health consequences, especially in cultures where adult children feel a strong obligation to provide care. Social support is an effective buffer at reducing caregiver stress.

Diseases

The death rate from cancer multiples tenfold from early to middle adulthood. Heredity, biological aging, and environment all contribute to cancer. 60% of affected individuals are cured. Regular screenings can reduce incidence of cancer. Cardiovascular diseases is a major cause of death in middle adulthood, especially among men. Symptoms include high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, working out, and reducing stress

Menopause

The end of menstruation and woman's reproductive capacity. Women who smoke or who have not had children tend to reach menopause earlier. Estrogen decline further, causing reproductive organs to shrink and lower sexual arrousal. The drop in estrogen also means that it no longer helps protect against aging of the skin, loss of bone mass, and accumulation of plaque on the walls of arteries by boosting good cholesteroal.

Climacteric

The midlife transition in which fertility declines, bringing an end to reproductive capacity in women and diminished fertility in men Over a 10 year period, during which the production of estrogen drops, shortening a woman's monthly cycle and making them irregular. In some no or irregular ova are released.

Alzheimer's Disease

The most common form of dementia, in which structural and chemical brain deterioration is associated with gradual loss of many aspects of thought and behavior, including memory, skilled and purposeful movements and comprehension and production of speech. Starts with severe memory problems. It brings personality changes, depression, loss of ability to comprehend and produce speech. Familial Alzheimer's, related to genes involved in generation of harmful amyloid, and generally has an early onset and progresses rapidly. About half of sporadic Alzheimer's have an abnormal gene that results in insulin deficiency linked to brain damage.

Maximum Lifespan

The species specific biological limit to length of life corresponding to the age at which the oldest known individual died. Longevity runs in families so identical twins die 3 years between one another and those with parents over the age of 70 have a much higher chance of living to be 90-100. But environmental factors become increasingly important after age 75 to 80

Primary Aging

Universal effects of aging that happens to everyone

Cohort Effects

Warner Schaie's test is explainable by cohort effects. In cross sectional research, each new generation experienced better health, education, and more cognitively stimulating everyday experiences than the one before it. Tests given may tap abilities less often used by older individuals, whose lives no longer require that they learn info for its own sake but instead for solving real world problems.

Frailty

Weakened functioning of diverse organs and body systems which profoundly interferes with everyday competence and leaves older adults highly vulnerable in the fact of infection, extreme weather and injury The death rate from unintentional injuries reaches an all time high from age 65 on, largely due to motor vehicle collisions and falls. Declines in physical and cognitive functioning contribute

Why do we age and die

Wear and tear, our organs, structures, cells wear our with use Being alive exposes you to things that can cause harm to use Free radicals

Levinson's Seasons of Life

Young/Old, the middle aged person must seek new ways of being both young and old. This means giving up certain youthful qualities, transforming others, and finding positive meaning in being older. Destruction/Creation, with greater awareness of morality, the middle-aged person focuses on ways he has acted destructively towards parents, children, etc and countered by an intensified desire to be generative. Masculinity/Femininity, the middle aged person must better balance the 2. For men, this means greater acceptance of traits of nurturance and caring. For women, it means greater openness to characteristics of autonomy and assertiveness. Engagement/Separateness, the middle aged person must forge a better balance engagement in the external world and separateness. For people with successful careers, this may mean reducing concern with achievement in favor of attending fully to oneself.

Apoptosis

the death of cells that occurs as a normal and controlled part of an organism's growth or development. Even happens prenatally like when fingers and toes are webbed together

Grandparent Gratification

• Valued older adult, being perceived as a wise, helpful person • Immortality through descendants, leaving behind multiple generations after death • Reinvolvement with personal past, being able to pass family history and values to a new generation • Indulgence, having fun with children without major child rearing responsibilities.