chapter 17 notecards Flashcards
They select personally valued activities to optimize returns from their diminishing energy
They also come up with new ways to compensate for cognitive losses
Ex. An 80 year old concert pianist stated when asked how he had managed to sustain his talents at his age that
He was selective: he played fewer pieces
This enabled him to optimize his energy: he could practice each piece more
He developed new, compensatory techniques for a decline in playing speed: ex. Before a fast passage, he played extra slowly, so the fast section appeared to his audience to move more quickly
selective optimization with compensation
Because older adults take in less about a stimulus and its context, their _______is reduced in relation to that of younger people
Ex. When watching a movie older adults…
Retain fewer details because of slower cognitive processing
Attend poorly to context – where they saw the movie and who went with them – due to their reduced working memory capacity because they cant hold on to as many pieces of information at once
Ex. Older adults sometimes cannot distinguish an experienced event from one they imagined
recall
_______ memory suffers less in late adulthood because:
It is a fairly _____ type of memory that demands little mental effort
A multitude of _________ for remembering are present
recognition
automatic
environmental supports
automatic form of memory without conscious awareness
In a typical implicit memory task, you would be shown a list of words, then asked to fill in a word fragment (such as t—K).
You would probably complete the sentence with a word you had just seen (task) rather than another word (took or tack)
Without trying to do so, you would engage in recall
Age differences in implicit memory are much _____ than in explicit, or deliberate, memory
implicit memory
smaller
difficulty creating and retrieving links between pieces of information
Ex. Where you put your keys in your purse and where you parked the car
associative memory deficit
When older adults are directed to use the memory strategy of ________ during both study and retrieval, the difference between young and old adults nearly disappears
elaboration
very long-term recall
Ex. Telling childhood stories to grandkids
remote memory
refers to remembering to engage in planned actions in the future
Whereas other types of memory refer to events from the past, prospective memory refers to events in the future
prospective memory
___________in compensation for memory seems to be the largest reason older adults’ deficits in prospective memory seen in the laboratory, do not actually effect them in everyday life
use of external aids
Like implicit memory, ___________changes little in late life
As long as partners do not speak too quickly and elders are given enough time to process written text accurately
language comprehension
2 aspects of language production do show age-related losses
_________ form long-term memory
_______what to say and how to say it
retrieving words
planning
Aging brings both deterioration and adaptive changes in problem solving
The problematic situations the elderly encounter are often _____ from those experienced at earlier ages
Ex. After retirement, older adults do not have to deal with workplace problems, their children are typically grown and living on their own, and their marriages have endured long enough to have fewer difficulties
As long as they perceive problems as under their control and important, elders are active and effective at solving them
Findings indicate that older adults make quicker decisions about whether they are ill and seek medical care sooner than younger people
Older adults often consult others for advice about everyday problems, and couples more often collaborate in problem solving
different
breadth and depth of practical knowledge, ability to reflect on that knowledge in ways that make life more bearable and worthwhile, emotional maturity, and an altruistic form of creativity
wisdom
Results revealed that ____ is no guarantee of wisdom
A small number of adults of diverse ages ranked among the wise
But type of life experience made a ________(ex. People with experience in human services who had training in solving human problems tended to attain high wisdom scores)
In addition to age and life experience, having faced and over come ______ appears to be an important contributor to late-life wisdom
age
different
adversity
– above-average education, stimulating leisure activities, community participation, and flexible personality – predicts maintenance of mental activities into advanced old age
a mentally active life
