Psych 255 Mini Exam 7

What is biological generativity?

adults have offspring

What is parental offspring?

adults nurture and guide children

At what time do losses outnumber gains?

at late midlife

What strategies would be most helpful in improving memory in middle age?

organization and categorization

What are the reasons why middle adulthood starts later and lasts longer now than in the early 1900s?

people are living healthier today than they were in the past

How do adults feel about their age identity vs. their chronological age as they get older?

As adults become older, their age identity is younger than their chronological age

John Horn's study was cross-sectional...What might be responsible for the differences he found?

Because John Horn's research was cross sectional, the differences he found may be due to cohort effects related to things like educational differences rather than age

What is openness to experience?

Imaginative or practical? Variety or routine? Independent or conforming?

What are the big five personality traits?

Neuroticism, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion (only have to know these 4)

Know that adult development experts are unanimous in their belief that midlife crises have been exaggerated

adult development experts are virtually unanimous in their belief that midlife crises have been exaggerated, and that happiness and positive affect have an upward trajectory from early adulthood to late adulthood

What is work generativity?

adults develop skills that are passed down to others

What kinds of questions fall under the concept of age identity?

"To which age group do you belong?" "How old do you feel?"

What are George Vaillant's findings in his study about middle adulthood predicting late adulthood?

- George Villiant explored the question, "Does personality at middle age predict what a person's life will be like in late adulthood?" - - In answering this question, he found that alcohol abuse and smoking at age 50 were the best predictors of death at 75-80 and that generativity was more strongly related than intimacy to whether individuals would have an enduring and happy marriage

What are the fight-or-flight tendencies and tend-and-befriend patterns of men and women in the context of stress?

- When men face stress, they are likely to respond in a fight-or-flight manner, in which they become aggressive or withdraw from social contact - When women face stress, they are likely to engage in a tend-and-befriend pattern, in which they seek social alliances with others, especially friends

What are the four major conflicts from 40-45 as we transition into middle adulthood?

- being young vs being old - being destructive vs constructive - being masculine vs being feminine - being attached to others vs being separated from them

What is spatial orientation?

- computer example spatial orientation: ability to visualize and mentally rotate stimuli in two- and three-dimensional space

What is the answer to number 22 on the test?

C. The answer is always C.

What did Victor Frankl say the three most distinct human qualities are?

Frankl thought that the three most distinctly human qualities are spirituality, freedom, and responsibility. In his terms, spirituality refers to a human being's uniqueness of spirit, philosophy, and mind

What is generativity?

Generativity encompasses adults' desire to leave legacies of themselves to the next generation, through which they achieve a kind of immortality

What is George Vaillant's comparison of adolescence to the forties?

George Vaillant (1977) concluded differently from his Grant Study - just as adolescence is a time for detecting parental flaws and discovering the truth about childhood, the forties are a decade of reassessing and recording the truth about adolescence and adulthood

What are fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence? How do they change in middle adulthood?

John Horn found that crystallized intelligence, which is an individual's accumulated information and verbal skills, continues to increase in middle adulthood, while fluid intelligence, which is one's ability to reason abstractly, begins to decline during middle adulthood

How does our sense of personal control change in midlife?

Margie Lachman has described how personal control changes when individuals move into middle age. On average, it peaks in midlife and then declines

What is conscientiousness?

Organized or disorganized? Careful or careless? Disciplined or impulsive?

What is extraversion?

Sociable or retiring? Fun-loving or somber? Affectionate or reserved?

What is stagnation?

Stagnation, sometimes called self-absorption, develops when individuals sense that they have done little or nothing for the next generation

What is the cumulative model of personality development?

The Cumulative personality model of development states that with time and age, people become more adept at interacting with their environment in ways that promote stability of personality

What is the contemporary life events approach?

The contemporary life-events approach emphasizes that how life events influence the individual's development depends on the life event itself - Mediating factors (physical health, family support). - The individuals adaptation to the life event (appraisal of the threat, coping strategies). - The life stage event - The sociohistorical event

What is verbal memory?

ability to encode and recall meaningful language units, such as a list of words

What is numeric ability?

ability to perform simple mathematical computations such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication

What is perceptual speed?

ability to quickly and accurately make simple discriminations in visual stimuli

What is inductive reasoning?

ability to recognize and understand patterns and relationships in a problem and use this understanding to solve other instances of the problem

What is verbal comprehension?

ability to understand ideas expressed in words

What is spatial orientation?

ability to visualize and mentally rotate stimuli in two- and three-dimensional space

What is neuroticism?

calm or anxious? secure or insecure?

What did Levinson think a a successful midlife transition depends on?

depends on how effectively we reduce polarities and accept each as an integral part of our being

When does the greatest change in personality traits occur?

early adulthood

What is the Erikson stage for middle adulthood?

generativity vs stagnation

How is late midlife defined?

late midlife is the age period of 55 to 65

How is middle adulthood defined and what are the general changes it encompasses?

middle adulthood is considered to be the developmental period that begins at approximately 40 years of age and extends to about 60 or 65 years of age. It is a time of..... - Declining physical activities - Expanding responsibility - Increased awareness of the young-old polarity and the shrinking amount of time left to live - Seeking to transmit meaning to the next generation - Reaching and maintain satisfaction in careers

What did the Seattle Longitudinal Study find?

they found earliest decline in perceptual speed, and least decline in verbal comprehension

What did Victor Frankl say adds meaning to life?

to get meaning from life you have to understand the concept of death

What is the serious question Levinson posits we face at age 28-33?

we face the bigger question of determining a goal

What does Levinson have to say about our teen years?

we transition from dependence to independence and there needs to be a formation of a dream

What is working memory?

working memory, the mental "workbench" where individuals manipulate and assemble information when making decisions, solving problems, and comprehending written and spoken language