Lecture 6 - Stability, change and ageing Flashcards
What is trait expression influenced by?
• social demands (how society would like you to behave - depends on situation)
• expectations (of friends and family)
• social values/ cultural values - e.g. individualist vs collectivist
• biology/ heritability
• individual circumstances
- these factors change with age
What 3 areas did Roberts & Mroczek (2008) argue people change in as they get older
- warmth
- self-growth
- emotional stability
Give an example of culture change in how people are viewed
- concept of a young person changes often, even in 10 years
- and concept of what is classed as a middle aged person - as we are living longer
Define a cohort effect
Differences between groups of (similary aged) individuals who share a common experience - people who were born in 1980 for instance
What is a cross-sectional study?
all ages at a certain point in time
When measuring cognition, what does research seem to focus on?
Visual/ spatial or verbal measures seperately
- e.g.:
• ravens
• wechslers
• kaufmans Brief intelligence test - assessed as a child, then later as an adult
• Cattells culture fair test - doesnt tap into verbal/ visual/ spatial abilities
What are the different forms of Ravens progressive matrices?
- Coloured progressive matrices (4-11 years)
- simple patterns, very short test - Standard Progressive matrices (11-18)
- patterns are more complicated, takes longer - Advanced Progressive matrices (18+)
- takes longer, start easy but more onto harder ones
- it’s about visual/ spatial abilities in the mind
Outline the Wechsler Abbreviated scale of intelligence (WASI)
- shorter version of his original tests
- tests 6-90 year olds!
- tasks are standardised for your age
has 4 subsets of tasks: (30 minutes each)
- Similarities - picture/ word shared characteristics
- do pictures relate to words? - Vocabulary - word and picture description
- describe a photo - matrix reasoning - pattern completion on paper
- given 9 squares pieces of paper and have to rearrange them into a sequence - Block design - pattern completion with blocks
Shorter version only tests 2 and 3
Give some examples of verbal/ vocabulary tasks
- given a word and have to choose the word that best describes from a list
- what does this word mean?
- given category and have to list as many items that are in that category
What do the results of WAIS show?
- what typical intelligence of each age group is
- patterns of what happens to intelligence as we age
- snap shot at that point in time, using a wide variety of different people that have same ages (cross-sectional)
What are limitations on cross-sectional studies?
X - one cohort may be bias than the others
- e.g. everyone in one academic year may have done this
What is a limitation of longitduinal studies?
X - cant compare the progression of one task to the progression of another task - peformance on a verbal task may get worse but it doesnt mean spatial performance will too
What are the 2 types of tasks on the WAIS?
Hold - can show deteroation
- verbal scale
- e.g. alzheimers, dementia - can test them at the start, during the middle or at the end to plot deterioration
- information; comprehension; arithmetic; similarities’ Digit-span; vocabulary
Don’t hold
- performance scale
- visual/ spatial tasks
- dont show deteriation - as they dont show how we use knowledge
- tend to be inbuilt abilities, not learned ones
- Dight symbol; picture completion; block design’ picture arrangement’ object assembly
Outline the difference of cattell’s fluid and crystallised intelligence
Fluid intelligence
- innate intellectual power - not learnt
- think logically and solve problems
Crystallised intelligence
- uses experience
- uses education
- wisdom
What were Horn (1970)’s findings about the development of general IQ, Fluid and crystallised intelligence
Fluid gets worse with age
Crystallised gets better with age as you get more experienecs
Both of these cancel each other out so general IQ stays pretty much the same
Outline the Seattle Longitudinal study (Schaie, 1990, 2004)
Study began in 1956
- studied: inductive reasoning, spatial orientation, perceptual speed, numeric ability, verbal ability, verbal memory
- 50 is when things start to decline
- found that between 50-59, few people se edecline in intellectual ability
- 75-79 most experience decline
- after 80 nothing changes, it cant get much worse
X - ignored stuff like dementia and Az
Define intellectual ability
Critical thinking, reasoning, problem solving
NOT intelligence
Outline what Wilkinson & Alison (1989) did (RT)
Looked at reaction time and age
- found that ability becomes stable as they age
- gets quickest around 18-30 then gets worse then plateaus
X - in a lab
Outline what Rabbit et al (2001) did (RT)
Choice reaction time task
- they were asked to do multiple things at once, as this reflects everyday multi-tasking
- research was actually only interested in one task
- found that abilities was dependent on the person, the task and the situation - cant make generic assumptions, everyone is different
Why could older people have slower performance?
- may have more self-monitoring - due to their extensive knowledge and experience
- allows more information to be considered before making a decision - meaning less errors but slower time
- They are just more cautious and do more monitoring, cant say they are getting worse
What did Hampson & Goldberg (2006) find about the stability of the Big 5?
- primary school kids were rated by their teachers
- Extraversion and conscientiousness were more stable than other three
- conscientiousness includes: setting goals etc - if they do this as a child, they do it as an adult
- the big 5 were stable within 2 time points in childhood, and within 2 time points in adulthood, but generally not so across the 40 years
Outline Milojev & Sibley (2014)
- surveyed new zealanders aged from 20-80, not longitudinal
- assessed the big 6
- levels of stability varied by age
- 20-50s - increasing stability
- 50-80 - decreasing stability
- Extraversion was most stable, agreeableness was least stable
Outline Woodruff (1983)
Measured if we change as much as we think we have
- measured them in 1944, then in 1969
- had to do 2 things:
1. complete as you remember yourself 25 years ago
- personality, cognitive abilities, behaviour etc
2. Complete as you are now
Found:
- remembered answers were inaccurate and overestimated change
- they had changed less than they thought they had
Outline Robins et al (2005)
- assessed students on big 5
- then asked 4 years later to rate the degree of change on the big 5
- they asked how much they thought they had changed
- then tested how much they had actually changed
- most thought they had become more extraverted, agreeable, conscientious, open and less neurotic
- But in fact, they hadnt really changed
- over-estimtaed how much they had changed
Outline Disengagement theory (Cumming & Henry (1961)
- argues emotion and emotional regulation- does change
- as we get older, we withdraw from societies and peers - this is normal
- students get involved in society and join groups
- but older people are more focused on self and on work
Outle Lawrie & Phillips (2016) as contrasting evidence to the disengagement theory
X - argues disengagement theory was too simple and ignores factors like cultural/ social factors
- argues people can develop emotional regulation as they get older - not withdraw.
