Late Adulthood: COGNITIVE

Question 1

what happens with short term memory in late adulthood?

Answer 1

The more any given cognitive task makes demands on working memory (short term memory), the larger the decline with age

Question 2

what is retrospective memory?

Answer 2

remembering something that has happened recently

Question 3

What is prospective memory?

Answer 3

remembering an event in the future, like a doctor’s appointment

Question 4

Do older adults outperform younger adults with retrospective or prospective memory? why?

Answer 4

Older adults outperform younger adults on prospective memory tasks in a natural setting, such as their home

• due to external memory cues

Question 5

what is strategy learning?

Answer 5

The learning process takes longer for older adults; however, when allowed more time, older adults’ performance was more similar to that of younger participants

Question 6

what is everyday memory?

Answer 6

• On virtually all “everyday” tasks older adults recall less well than younger adults
• Task-specific prior knowledge gives the elderly some recall advantage

Question 7

What is age-related memory decline associated with?

Answer 7

• Changes in the ratio of grey to white matter in the brain
• Reduction in volume of the hippocampus
• General slowing of information-processing, associated with a loss of nerve conductance speed in the central nervous system
• Changes in attention strategies

Question 8

what are the benefits of mental exercise?

Answer 8

• older adults who challenge themselves with complex mental activities can delay or reverse normal decline in brain mass that is part of primary aging
• some enhancement or better maintenance of intellectual skills results from an “engaged” and intellectually active lifestyle

Question 9

What is wisdom?

Answer 9

• a hypothesized cognitive characteristic of older adults that includes accumulated knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge to practical problems of living
• measured based on their solution to practical life problems

Question 10

What happens with wisdom during late adulthood?

Answer 10

• Performance on wisdom tasks does not decline with age
• The speed of accessing wisdom-related knowledge remains constant across adulthood
• Wisdom is linked with subjective well-being

Question 11

What is Cohen’s four stage theory of mid-to-late life creativity?

Answer 11

• describes the potential for creative work through adulthood
• includes the:
• Re-evaluation phase (around age 50)
• Liberation phase (in their 60s)
• Summing-up phase (in their 70s)
• Encore phase (in their 80s)

Question 12

What is the re-evaluation phase?

Answer 12

• age 50
• part of Cohen’s theory of creativity
• reflect on past accomplishments and formulate new goals

Question 13

What is the liberation phase?

Answer 13

• age 60
• part of Cohen’s theory of creativity
• freer to create, more tolerant of failures, willing to take more risks

Question 14

What is the summing up phase?

Answer 14

• age 70
• part of Cohen’s theory of creativity
• desire to knit accomplishments together into a cohesive story

Question 15

What is the encore phase?

Answer 15

• age 80
• part of Cohen’s theory of creativity
• desire to complete unfinished work or fulfill desires

Question 16

What is dementia?

Answer 16

a neurological disorder involving problems with memory and thinking that affect an individual’s emotional, social, and physical functioning

• leading cause of institutionalization of the elderly in Canada, especially women

Question 17

Is depression a concern in late adult years?

Answer 17

yes

Question 18

What are other types of dementia?

Answer 18

• Small strokes may cause vascular dementia
• Multiple causes exist (e.g., depression, drug use, disease, head trauma) and about 10% are reversible with treatment, so careful diagnosis is necessary
• Alzheimer’s disease

Question 19

Can therapy improve patient functioning?

Answer 19

While the brain damage is irreversible, therapy can improve the patient’s functioning

Question 20

What is alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 20

A very severe form of dementia

Question 21

What is the process of memory changes with alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 21

• Early onset is slow, with subtle memory difficulties and repetitive conversation, and disorientation in unfamiliar settings
• Memory for recent events goes next
• Memory for long-ago events and well-rehearsed cognitive tasks are retained until late in the illness, as they can be accessed by many alternative neural pathways
• Eventually failure to recognize family members, inability to communicate, and inability to perform self-care occurs

Question 22

What are some behavioural changes that occur with alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 22

• Changes in appetite regulation may result in significant overeating
• Facial expressions and emotions of others are difficult to process
• Some cannot control their own emotions, and display sudden bursts of anger or rage, or become excessively dependent
• As many as 40% may be depressed

Question 23

How do you diagnose Alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 23

• Definitive diagnosis can only occur after death
• Neurofibrillary tangles, surrounded by plaques, are more likely than in other dementias
• Since normal aging affects memory, it is difficult to recognize early Alzheimer’s
• Early detection indices: self-perceived difficulties in performing IADL s, biomarkers, and eye exam

Question 24

How do you deal with Alzheimer’s?

Answer 24

• Medication to increase neurotransmitters seems to slow the disease’s progress
• Healthy eating and exercise can reduce risk

Question 25

What is depression like for late adulthood?

Answer 25

• Signs of depression in older adults may be dismissed as old-age “grumpiness” by family members (ageism)
• Depression is often left untreated by health professionals
• Depression can be mistaken for dementia because both share symptoms of confusion and memory loss
• Depressed mood (Geriatric dysthymia) may be mistaken for clinical depression
  ○ Geriatric dysthymia does not usually progress to clinical depression and is related to life stresses
• Clinical depression is less common, but when it occurs, problems are of long duration and are severe enough to interfere with the ability to carry out normal activities

Question 26

What are the risk factors for depression and dysthymia?

Answer 26

• Inadequate social support
• Inadequate income
• Emotional loss
• Nagging health problems
• Health status (the strongest predictor)
  
  • the more disabling conditions older adults have, the more depressive symptoms they have
• Gender:
  
  • two times as many women are depressed

• Poverty

• Education—poorly educated older adults are more likely to be depressed

Question 27

why do women have higher rates of depression, but elderly men are more than 5 times as likely to commit suicide?

Answer 27

• Elderly men tend to have several risk factors at once
• Elderly men are more troubled by economic stress
• Men do not adjust as well as women to the death of a spouse
• Men are more successful in suicide attempts

Question 28

how do you treat depression?

Answer 28

• Enhancement of lifestyle (exercise)
• Social supports, including religious activities
• Counselling; psychological therapies
• Medication