Fundamentals on Adulthood and Aging Flashcards
What are the types of aging?
- Primary
- Secondary
- Tertiary
Primary Aging
- Something that everyone experiences, and disease-free development, thus called normative
- Differences in intensity, how much, how quickly and when it happens
- Examples: Puberty, menopause, cognitive and sensory changes
Secondary Aging
- Changes that some humans experience and not others, thus called non-normative
- Related to different environmental changes, injuries or illnesses
Examples: Trauma, skiing accidents, diabetes, cancer, radiation
Tertiary Aging
- Happens at the end of life
- Signals impending death where functions drop significantly
- Not universal, seems to happen a few years in advance for some people
What are 3 ways of conceptualizing age?
- Chronological age: time since birth, a poor proxy for development as it doesnt say much of development, elapsed time
- Perceived age: Your on perception of your age, often in relation to your chronological age. Something you have to ask the person
- Sociocultural age: perceptions of others or of yourself, tied to chronological age, hat you should or shouldnt do “at your age”, cultural expectations ‘, expectations
What is the lifespan perspective?
- Placing adulthood in a bigger and broader context
- To understand how my friend is like now as adult, I need to take into consideration of her early phase (childhood and adolescent)
- Need of different types of perspectives
What are the four key features in life-time perspective?
- Multidirectionality
Losses and gains, a balance throughout life - Plasticity
Nothing is set in stone from the get go, we change and adapt to the environment we are in. To a degree, and declines with age - Historical Context
Our past experiences, our culture in which we grew up in influence how we age - Multiple causation
How we develop is caused by different sources, its a dynamic system that happens in it specific context
What influences shapes development?
- Genetic influences
Nature - Physical and social contexts
Nurture
What are the genetic influences on development?
- Gene-environment correlations
- Gene-environment interactions
- Epigenetic inheritance
Gene-environment correlation
On how they work together, their associations
- Passive
Environment supportive of both parent and offspring genes, what works for me should work for my children
- Evocative
Different types of phenotype variation leads to different environmental responses, such as halo effect
- Active
Niche picking based on phenotype, happens in adolescent
Genetic-environment interactions
Phenotype expressed only when triggered by environment
- Vulnerable for depression
Epigenetic inheritance
When an environmental trigger cause a change in phenotype
Examples on how the physical context can shape development
Conditions of the physical space
- The amount of oxygen
- Water and food supply
- Living conditions
- Cause of stress, second hand smoking
What are the developmental influences?
- Normative age-graded
- Normative history-graded
- Non-normative
Normative age-graded
- Experienced by the majority of the population
- Its widespread
- Often experienced at a specific age or age range; going to school, getting a job, physiological changes
- Inherent changes
Normative history-graded
- Experienced by the majority of the population
- Happened during specific historical periods such as illnesses(covid) or changes in attitude (women’s right, retirement)
- Biological: illnesses
- Psychological: ageism
- Socio-cultural: beliefs about gender, when one should get children and settle down
- Cohort; experiences and circumstances that are unique to a specific generation, affect underpinnings
Longevity
- Average: at the age where half of the people in any given year is dead
- Maximum: Oldest known age
Expectancy
- Active: years expected to live healthy and independent
- Dependent: years of living after relying on others to survive
What are reasons as to why we live longer than humans did 100 years ago?
- Better living conditions
- Better healthcare systems, lower rates of childbirth
- Better education
Leads to well paid job, more opportunities and more money, knowledge - Advances with technology
What influence our longevity and life expectancy?
Genetic factors
- How old were my grandparents at time of death
- 25%
Environmental factors
- Combination with genes
- SES, poverty vs higher class?
- Lifestyle
- Exposure to illness and/or toxins (pollution)
Interactive factors
- Ethnicity
- Gender
What is the Hayflick limit?
- Part of a cellular theory on why we age
- A phenomena where cells have a fixed number of divisions that can limit the life span
What cause the cells to limit their number of divisions?
- Evidence suggests it is due to telomeres, protective covering, shortening with each division, 40-60 times
- Caused by a stress response and DNA damage
- Enzyme telomerase needed for DNA replication to fully reproduce but is not present in somatic cells
- Regulates reproduction of telomeres
- We dont get to the limit
Genetic Programming Theories
Aging programmed into our genetic code
- Caused by cell death, appears random but could be underlying cause
- Innate ability to self-destruct
- Dying cells triggering key processes in other cells (external factors)
- How is it triggered and how does it work
- Evidence supporting it is that many illnesses is associated with genetic aspects
- Very ambiguous, few research, is it possible to answer this? How could we find out?
