Kensinger: Aging Flashcards

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1
Q

What are 5 main aspects of aging?

A
  • Social-emotional
  • Societal
  • Evolutionary
  • Neurobiological
  • Cognitive
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2
Q

What are the 3 main socio-emotional aspects of aging?

A
  1. Living with limitations (mobility, interests)
  2. Smaller world (loneliness)
  3. Purpose in life (retirement, depression, loss)
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3
Q

What is ageism?

A

Prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination based on age

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4
Q

What’s the difference between prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination?

A

Prejudice = how we feel
Stereotyping = how we think (takes individual dignity away)
Discrimination = how we act

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5
Q

Why isn’t ageism banned yet?

A

It’s more socially accepted and often meant as an innocent thing

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6
Q

What are the benefits of employing an older person?

A
  • more experience
  • less panic
  • mentoring
  • loyal
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7
Q

What are 5 things you can do about ageism?

A
  • raise awareness
  • speak out
  • no prejudices/stereotypes
  • treat everyone the same
  • promote inter-generational contact
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8
Q

What is the consequence of exposure to ageism?

A

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy

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9
Q

What is a societal aspect of aging? Name three consequences of this

A

Due to baby-boom there are more older adults with increased longevity

  1. Elderly live autonomously as long as possible
  2. Increased pressure on family/caretakers
  3. Financing retirements is problematic
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10
Q

From an evolutionary perspective, why do we age?

A
  • Evolutionary pressure of natural selection
  • There is no evolutionary pressure to select genes that promote successful aging
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11
Q

How does our sleep rhythm develop over age? What are the consequences of this?

A
  • Less deep sleep
  • More active in the morning
  • Need for naps

Consequences: reduced cognitive performance, weaker memory consolidation

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12
Q

What’s the difference between ontogenesis and fylogenesis?

A

Ontogenesis = individual development
Fylogenesis = development of the species

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13
Q

What is dual aging?

A

More older adults and more longevity

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14
Q

What are 4 main aspects of cognitive decline?

A
  1. Regulative functions
  2. Memory
  3. Self-efficacy & self-management
  4. Orienting
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15
Q

What are considered regulative functions and how does this decline with age?

A
  1. Stability and flexibility (switching tasks, shielding goals)
  2. Working memory (updating, remembering)
  3. Planning, impulse control

It declines because of deterioration PFC

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16
Q

Which brain regions decline first with age?

A

(Dorsolateral) prefrontal cortex + hippocampus

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17
Q

What is the difference between self-efficacy and self-management ability? How does this decline with age?

A

Self-efficacy = self-confidence
Self-management = capacity to control own behavior/emotions

This declines because of prefrontal decline

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18
Q

Which type of memory gets harder to remember with age?

A

Contextual details of events (where, who, when)

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19
Q

What are the 4 notions of orienting?

A
  1. Notion of place (where you are)
  2. Notion of temporal space (where were you then)
  3. Notion of contextual space
  4. Notion of autobiographical space (who are you)
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20
Q

Which cognitive aspect declines fast with dementia?

A

Memory and orienting

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21
Q

What are cognitive processes that remain stable with age and which processes can improve with age?

A

Stable: creativity, language, social

Improve: crystallized knowledge, wisdom

22
Q

What are the two main purposes of intervention and prevention in aging?

A
  • promote resilience against stressors
  • prevent neurocognitive decline
23
Q

Which three factors are important in personal differences in cognitive status with aging?

A
  • lifestyle
  • social connectedness/purpose in life
  • brain and skill training
24
Q

What is most important to establish social connectedness at later age?

A
  • intergenerational contact
  • meaning
  • activity
  • competence
25
Q

What does skill training promote neurologically?

A

Structural and functional neural network connectivity

26
Q

What is the issue with research done in brain gymnastics?

A

Poor replicability and many studies aren’t properly conducted

27
Q

What are the 4 criteria of the DSM to get the diagnosis of dementia?

A
  1. Memory problems
  2. Cognitive problems in at least another domain
  3. Influences daily functioning
  4. Clear consciousness, non-hallucinating
28
Q

Which 3 brain areas does dementia affect?

A

PFC –> cognitive functions
Amygdala –> emotion regulation
MTL/hippocampus –> memory consolidation

29
Q

What are 3 functions of social and affective factors in aging?

A

1 Influence speed of cognitive decline
2 Functions remain relatively reserved with age
3 Provide rich form of environmental support + cues for elderly

30
Q

What are three categories of theories of cognitive aging?

A
  1. Focus on availability of resources
  2. Focus on compensatory strategies
  3. Focus on domain-specific areas of loss
31
Q

What does the theory that focuses on availability of resources say about cognitive aging?

A
  • Cognitive resources are limited the older you get
  • Context influences availability resources (time of day)
32
Q

What are cognitive resources? What is the link with variability in socioaffective functioning in elderly?

A

Things like attention, efficiency, executive function and inhibition.

Variability in socioaffective functioning has been linked to differences in availability of resources

33
Q

What is meant with ‘convergence and divergence between resources and cognitive/sociaffective domains? How does this work?

A

Emotional/social memory is better preserved than nonsocial memory

Emotional info can capture attention and arousing/self-relevant info is prioritized

34
Q

What is the main point of the focus on compensatory strategies theory?

A

Older adults recruit additional resources to attempt to address cognitive challenges

35
Q

What is the posterior-anterior shift with aging (PASA) model?

A

Identifies patterns of age-related changes across regions
- Increased frontal lobe and decreased occipital lobe activity

36
Q

What do the HAROLD and CRUNCH models both tell?

A

Older adults need to recruit additional neural regions to support task performance

37
Q

What is the difference in strategies of reducing negative emotions between young and elderly?

A

Young: cognitive reappraisal
Old: situation selection

38
Q

How do elderly differ from young in how they encode information concerning themselves?

A

Elderly tend to apply resources to process emotional info in a more controlled way than young adults

39
Q

What is the main aspect of the theory of domain-specific areas of loss?

A

Some age-related declines may not be explained by core deficits, but by changes that have a larger impact on 1 area of cognition than on the other

40
Q

Which two regions are least affected with aging? What is the consequence of this?

A

Ventromedial PFC + amygdala
–> preservation of socioaffective functioning and emotions

41
Q

What is wisdom?

A

Ability that integrates socioaffective aging and cognitive function through the accumulation of knowledge, social/cognitive experience and emotional processes

42
Q

What are the main changes in the PFC with age?

A

Atrophy white and grey matter and hemispheric asymmetry reduction (HAROLD)

43
Q

What is mild cognitive aging?

A

When aging doesn’t prevent performance of daily activities, but it can be fairly severe (e.g. memory loss)

44
Q

How do socio/emotional factors impact what is remembered from a scene?

A

Attention is oriented in older age
–> attention often towards positive or self-relevant info

45
Q

What is the influence of emotion on cognition?

A
  • Enhances attention and memory
  • Distracts, impedes task performance
46
Q

What are the benefits and negative aspects of social influences on cognition?

A

Benefits:
1. Large network –> boost memory accuracy
2. Mitigate learning/memory deficits in elderly

Negatives:
1. Perspective taking difficulties
2. Social interactions remind elderly of ageism –> self-fulfilling prophecy

47
Q

Which type of intelligence declines with age?

A

Fluid intelligence

48
Q

Which component of the Theory of Mind is more preserved with age and which type of intelligence can protect from ToM declines?

A

Affective component is preserved

Crystallized intelligence can help protect from ToM declines

49
Q

How does the cognitive ability of face recognition develop with age?

A

More difficulties recognizing (negative) basic emotions and attention is less eye-focused. The decline in fluid intelligence doesn’t help

50
Q

What is the direction of the relationship between socioaffective function and cognitive function?

A

Bidirectional

51
Q

On which processes does cognition have an influence on socioaffective processing and on which processes does socioaffective processing have an inluence on cognition?

A

Cognition –> socioaff.
- Emotional (re)appraisals
- Social inferences

Socioaff. –> Cognition
- Attention
- Memory

52
Q

How does the relationship between socioaffective processing and context develop with age?

A

Context has a larger influence on elderly, because the socioemotional information can come solely from the environment and they prioritize that type of info