Ageing and Psychological Disorders Flashcards
Explain gerocomy.
The belief and practice that older men gain health and freedom for disease through sexual contact with younger women.
What kind of learning does not decline with age, and what does?
Crystallised and fluid intelligence.
What is primary ageing?
The result of illness or decline in function due to the passage of time,
What is secondary ageing?
The acquisition of disabilities and diseases that are not a normal part of ageing.
Define Alzheimer’s disease.
A progressive neurological disorder that is the most common form of dementia.
Involvement with what kind of activities in early life protects against the cognitive deficits associated with ageing (like dementia)?
Cognitively stimulating.
What kind of environment aids the cognitive functions of older adults?
Enriched environment.
The level of participation with the environment, including what three types of activities, is thought to affect cognitive health in old age?
Cognitive, physical, and social activities.
What is occupational physical activity associated with?
Low intellectual demand.
Do occupational or leisure activities with low intellectual or cognitive demands serve as protection from cognitive deficits?
No, and they can be detrimental.
What kinds of attention processes are most affected by old age?
Complex attention processes, like attempts to switch between cognitive tasks or to complete two separate tasks at the same time.
Define executive emotion.
The ability to control one’s attentional processes.
Define dementia.
Neurological disorder where a gradual decline of intellectual functioning occurs.
What explanation, with reference to the frontal lobes, could explain executive attention declines in older adults without dementia?
Reduced blow flow to the frontal lobes, due to low blood pressure.
What type of attention, in contrast to complex attention processes, remains relatively intact with age, even with dementia?
The ability to focus attention on single tasks.
What brain area is most affected by natural ageing, and what does this result in?
The hippocampus, which causes lapses in memory, as the hippocampus is central to memory functioning.
How does memory change with ageing?
Decreases in both the amount of information recalled, and the speed of retrieval.
What kinds of memories are resistant to age?
Semantic memories.
What kind of memories are affected by age?
Episodic, and prospective memory.
What is prospective memory?
Remembering to remember.
How does prospective memory change?
Remembering time-based tasks becomes harder than remembering event based tasks.
_____ memory is more resistant to changes with increasing age than _____ memory?
Recognition and recall.
The expression and understanding of what is the cognitive skill that is most robust in the face of the ageing process?
Language.
Why do changes in language abilities warrant investigation?
It may be a sign of illness, because it shouldn’t occur naturally.
