Middle Adulthood Flashcards
Middle adulthood in chronological terms is the years between ages __.
40 and 65
A time not primarily of decline and loss but also of mastery, competence and growth- a time or reevaluating goals and aspirations and deciding how best to use the remaining part of the life span.
Middle age
Behavioral and lifestyle factors dating from __ can affect the likelihood, timing and extent of physical change.
Youth
People who lead _ lives lose muscle tone and energy and become even less inclined to exert themselves physically.
Sedentary lives
Age related visual problems occur mainly in five areas which are:
Near vision
Dynamic vision
Sensitivity to light
Visual search
Speed & processing visual information
Common age related visual problem.
Visual acuity/ Sharpness of vision
Because of changes in the pupil of the eye, middle aged people may need about __ brightness to compensate for the loss of light reaching the retina.
1/3
Many people ages _ and older need reading glasses for presbyopia.
40
A lessened ability to focus on near objects- a condition associated with aging.
Presbyopia
The meaning of prefix “presby”.
With age
The incidence of _ (nearsightedness) also increases through middle age.
Myopia
A gradual hearing loss, rarely noticed earlier in life, speeds up in the _.
50’s
A condition of hearing loss, normally limited to higher-pitched sounds than those used in speech.
Presbycusis
Hearing loss precedes twice as quickly in __.
Men
Which gender tends to retain sensitivity to taste and smell longer?
Women
Adults begin to lose sensitivity to touch after age _, and to pain after age _.
45; 50
People feel pain _, and become _ able to tolerate it.
Less
Less
The peak ages of strength and coordination which gradually declines during middle adulthood.
20’s
Some loss of muscle strength is noticeable by age _.
45
Percentage of maximum strength that may be gone by 60.
10-15 %
The reason for losing muscle strength is a loss of muscle fiber, which is replaced by _.
Fat
It reflects birth weight and muscle growth earlier in life as well as parents’ childhood socioeconomic status and an important predictor of future disability, functional losses and mortality.
Grip strength
It can prevent muscle loss and even regain strength.
Strength training
Loss of endurance results from a gradual decrease in the rate of _ after 40.
Basal metabolism
Use of energy to maintain vital functions.
Basal metabolism
Manual dexterity generally becomes _ after the midthirties.
Less efficient
Simple reaction time slows very little until about age _ but choice reaction time slows gradually throughout adulthood.
50
By __ or __ decade, the skin may become less taut and smooth as the layer of fat below the surface becomes thinner, collagen molecules more rigid and elastin fibers more brittle.
Fifth or sixth decade
Hair may become __, due to a slowed replacement rate and __ as production of melanin declines.
Thinner, grayer
Middle aged people tend to __ as a result of accumulation of body fat.
Gain weight
They tend to lose height due to __.
Shrinkage of intervertebral disks.
Bone density normally peaks in the _ or _.
20’s or 30’s
Bone loss happens as more __ is absorbed than replaced, causing bones to become thinner and more brittle.
Calcium
Bone loss accelerates in the fifties and sixties, it occurs twice as rapidly in __.
Women
What are the activities in the earlier adulthood tends to speed bone loss?
Smoking, alcohol use and poor diet
Joints may become stiffer as a result of accumulated _.
Stress
Large proportions of middle aged and even older adults show __ or __ in organ functioning.
Little/ No decline
Heart begins to pump more slowly in midfifties. By 65, it may lose up to 40 % of it’s _.
Aerobic power
__ of hearts become thicker and more rigid.
Arterial walls
Heart disease becomes more common beginning in the _ or _.
Late 40’s or early 50’s.
The maximum volume of air the lungs can draw in and expel. It may begin to diminish at about age 40 and may drop by as much as __percent by age 70.
Vital capacity
40%
Temperature regulation and immune response may become to __ and sleep may become __.
Weaken;
Less deep
Cessation of menstrual and of ability to bear children.
Menopause
Menopause is considered to have occurred __ after the last menstrual period. This happens on average at about age _ to _.
1 year
50-52
Menopause is not a single event but a process, now called _.
Menstrual transition
Beginning in her __ and __, a woman’s production of mature ova begins to decline and the ovaries produce less of estrogen.
mid 30’s and mid 40’s
The period of 3 to 5 years during which the slowing of hormone production and ovulation occurs, prior and during the 1st year after menopause, is called:
Perimenopause
Most women experience menopause between ages _ and _.
45 and 55
Short term, low-dose administration of _ is the most effective way to alleviate hot flashes, but it carries serious risks.
Artificial estrogen
Testosterone levels decrease slowly after the _, about _% a year.
30s
1 %
The decline in testosterone has been associated with reductions in __ and __ as well as decreased energy, lower sex drive, overweight, emotional irritability and depressed mood.
Bone density
Muscle mass
Low testosterone also has been linked to __ and __ (diseases) and may increase mortality.
Diabetes
Cardiovascular disease
Inability of a man to achieve or maintain an erect penis sufficient for satisfactory sexual performance. Popularly called impotence.
Erectile dysfunction
Frequency of sexual activity and satisfaction with sex life tend to diminish gradually during __ and __.
40s and 50s
Possible physical causes of decreased sexual satisfaction.
Chronic diseases, surgery, medications and too much food or alcohol.
Possible causes of a decline in frequency of sexual activity.
Monotony in relationship
Less energy
Occasional or chronic pains
Fatigue
No longer stay awake with ease
Chronically high blood pressure.
Hypertension
Disease in which the body does not produce or properly use insulin.
Diabetes
A hormone that converts sugar, starches and other foods into energy needed for daily life.
Insulin
People who do not smoke, exercise regularly, drink alcohol only in moderation and eat plenty of fruits and vegetables have 4x less mortality risk in midlife and old age- equivalent to __ years difference than people who do not follow these behaviors.
14 years
Excess weight in middle age increases the risk of __ and __ even in healthy people and those who have never smoked.
Impaired health & death
People with __ socioeconomic status tend to have poorer health, shorter life expectancy, lower well being, chronic diseases and more restricted access to health care.
Low
People with higher SES tend to have greater __ over what happens to them as they age and tend to choose _ lifestyle.
Sense of control
Healthier
Which gender has higher expectancy and lower death rates throughout life?
Women
Women’s greater longevity has been attributed to genetic protection given by __ (which men do not have) and before menopause, to beneficial effects of __, particularly on cardiovascular health.
Second x chromosome
Estrogen
Which gender are more likely to report being in fair or poor health and seek doctors or outpatient or emergency rooms more often?
Women
Which gender has longer hospital stays and more likely to have chronic and life-threatening health problems?
Men
Women are at increased risk after menopause, particularly what diseases?
Osteoporosis
Breast cancer
Heart disease
Women in many developed countries now can expect to live __ after menopause.
Half their adult lives
A condition in which the bones become thin and brittle as a result of calcium depletion. It means ‘porous bones’.
Osteoporosis
Common signs of osteoporosis are marked loss in height and hunchbacked posture that results from compression and collapse of a weakened _.
Spinal column
Treatment with artificial estrogen, sometimes in combination with progesterone, to relieve or prevent symptoms caused by decline in estrogen levels after menopause.
Hormone Therapy
Response to physical or psychological demands; damage that occurs where perceived environmental demands or stressors exceed a person’s capacity to cope with them.
Stress
The body’s capacity to adapt stress involves _ which perceives danger, the _ which mobilize the body to fight it and the _ which provides defenses.
Brain
Adrenal glands
Immune system
Age group that is better equipped to cope with stress than other age groups.
Middle age
Which gender tends to report more extreme stress and be more concerned about it?
Women (35/28)
Nurturant activies that promote safety, reliance on social networks to exchange resources and responsibilities. This is more typically the response pattern of women in stress.
Befriend
Befriend activated by _ and other female reproductive hormones may have evolved through natural selection and may draw on women’s involvement in attachment and caregiving.
Oxytocin
What are the two distinct types of stressors?
Acute stress
Prolonged stress
What stressors strengthen the immune system and what stressors weaken it down?
Strengthen- Acute/Short term stress
Weaken- Intense/Prolonged stress
How many hours of sleep at night is found to be associated with lower stress?
Atleast 7 hours
Adults with _ are more likely than their peers to be diagnosed with heart disease, diabetes, arthritis or stroke.
Serious psychological distress
Cognitively, verbal meaning __ into old age.
Improve
From Schaie’s seattle longitudinal study, only 13 to 17 % of adults declined in number, memory recall, or verbal fluency between ages __.
39 and 53
Type of intelligence, proposed by Horn and Cattell,that is applied to novel problems and is relatively independent of educational and cultural influences.
Fluid Intelligence
Type of intelligence, proposed by Horn and Cattell, involving the ability to remember and use learned information; largely dependent on education and culture.
Crystallized Intelligence
Fluid intelligence has been found to peak in __ while crystallized intelligence improves through __ and often until near the end of life.
Young adulthood
Middle age
__ captures fluid abilities for expert problem solving.
Encapsulation
In solving problems in their own fields, middle aged people more than compensated with judgment developed from __.
Experience
Intuitive, experience based thinking is also characteristic of what kind of thought?
Postformal thought.
Mature adults integrate logic with intuition and emotion; conflicting facts and ideas; new information with what they already know. What kind of thought is this?
Integrative Thought
Many creative people have reached their _ in middle age.
Greatest achievements
Children may show creative potential; but in adults, what counts is __: what and how much a creative mind produces.
Creative performance
Creativity develops in what context?
Social context.
Complex work may improve cognitive _.
Flexibility
In psychosocial terms, middle adulthood once was considered a relatively _ period.
Settled
Freud (1906/1942) saw no point in psychotherapy for people over _, because he believes _ is permanently formed by that age.
50
Personality
These theorists such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers looked on middle age as an opportunity for positive change.
Humanist theorists
He held that full functioning requires a constant, lifelong process of bringing the self in harmony with experience.
Rogers (1961)
Costa and McCrae”s trait research, which originally claimed __ or __ of personality after age _ in the Big 5 trait groupings has now acknowledged slower change during middle and older years as well.
Continuity or consistency
30
In middle age, this trait tends to show remarkable gains apparently attendant on work experience, while emotional stability continues to steady upward begun in _.
Conscientiousness
Young adulthood
Jung’s term for emergence of the true self through balancing or integration of conflicting parts of the personality.
Individuation
Until age _, said Jung, adults concentrate on obligations to family and society and develop aspects of personality that will help them reach external goals.
40
Women emphasize expressiveness and nurturance; men are primarily oriented toward _.
Achievement
What are the 2 necessary but difficult tasks of midlife, according to Carl Jung’s Individuation and Transcendence?
Giving up the image of youth
Acknowledging mortality
Jung (1996): The need to acknowledge mortality requires a search for __ which may be unsettling and may temporarily lose their moorings.
Meaning within the self
In contrast to Jung who saw midlife as a time of turning inward, Erikson described an _.
Outward turn
Erikson saw the years around age 40 as the time when people enter their _, generativity versus stagnation.
7th normative stage
Stage where middle age adults develop a concern with establishing, guiding, and influencing the next generation or else experiences stagnation.
Generativity versus stagnation
A sense of inactivity or lifelessness.
Stagnation
The virtue of the period of generativity vs stagnation.
Care
Erikson’s term for concern of mature adults for establishing, guiding and influencing the next generation.
Generativity
Generativity, according to Erikson is a sign of both __ and __.
Psychological maturity
Psychological health
The demand of work and family during the midlife period calls for __ responses.
Generative responses
Highly generative parents tend to be more involved in their children’s schooling than less generative and who have what style of parenting?
Authoritative parenting
He reported a lessening of gender differentiation at midlife and a tendency for men to become more nurturant and expressive.
Vaillant
Levinson’s men in midlife become less obsessed with personal achievement and more concerned with _.
Relationships
In some normative-crisis models, stressful life period precipitated by the review and reevaluation of one’s past, typically occurring in the early to middle forties.
Midlife crisis
Midlife crisis was conceptualized as a crisis of identity, indeed it has been called a _.
Second adolescence
A time of stocktaking, yielding new insights into the self and spurring midcourse corrections in the design and trajectory of one’s life.
Midlife review
People high in this trait are more likely to experience midlife crises.
Neuroticism
People with this trait and who have a sense of mastery and control are more likely to navigate the midlife crossing successfully.
Ego resiliency
Susan Krauss Whitbourne’s theory of identity development based on processes of assimilation and accommodation.
Identity Process Theory (IPT)
Perceived physical characteristics, cognitive abilities and personality traits are incorporated into _.
Identity schemas
Whitbourne’s term for adjusting the self concept to fit new experience.
Identity accomodation
People who constantly assimilate are __ and do not learn from experience. People who constantly __ are weak and highly vulnerable to criticism; their identity is easily undermined.
Inflexible
Accommodate
This field views the development of the self as a continuous process of constructing one’s life story- a dramatic narrative or personal myth to help make sense of one’s life and connect the past and present with the future.
Narrative psychology
The evolving story of one’s life, provides a person with a _ identity.
Narrative identity
Narrative psychologists view _ as the internalized script or story.
Identity
People’s scripts tend to reflect their _.
Personality
Highly generative adults tend to construct _. These scripts often feature a theme of redemption or deliverance from suffering and are associated with psychological well being.
Generativity scripts
Traditional gender roles, according to him, evolved to ensure the well being of growing children: The mother must be the caregiver, the father the provider.
Gutmann
Gutmann’s term for reversal of gender roles after the end of active parenting.
Gender crossover
Men in gender crossover, free to explore their previously feminine side, become more __. Women become more __ and independent.
Passive
Dominant
Positive emotionality increases on average among _, but falls among __ in middle age but rises sharply for both sexes, especially in _ in late adulthood.
Men
Women
Men
What are the 2 other factors of emotionality in middle age aside from physical health?
Marital status
Education
Married people at midlife tend to report more __ and less _. (Emotion)
Positive
Negative
People with higher education reported more positive emotion and less negative emotion but only when _ was controlled.
Stress
Positive emotions in adults associated with _ tend to persist.
Pleasant memories
What are the 6 dimensions of multiple dimensions of well being by Carol Ryff?
Self acceptance
Positive relations with others
Autonomy
Environmental mastery
Purpose in life
Personal growth
Theory claiming that people move through life surrounded by concentric circles of intimate relationships in which they felt for assistance, well being and social support.
Social Convoy Theory
Social convoy theory was proposed by _.
Kahn and Antonucci
Convoys usually show _ stability.
Short term
Which age group tends to have the largest convoys?
Middle age
Women’s convoys, particularly the inner circle, tend to be _ .
Larger
Theory that claims that people select social contacts on the basis of the changing relative importance of social interaction as a source of information and as an aid in developing and maintaining a self concept, and as a source of emotional wellbeing.
Socioemotional selectivity theory
Who proposed Socioemotional selectivity theory?
Cartensen
3 main goals of social interaction, according to Cartensen.
Source of information
Helps people develop and maintain a sense of self
Source of pleasure and comfort or emotional well being
Among the 3 main goals of social interaction by Cartensen, which is the paramount for infancy and which comes to the fore from childhood through young adulthood?
3rd- need for emotional support
1st- information seeking
As young people strive to learn about their society and their place in it, __ may well be the best sources of knowledge.
Strangers
Marital satisfaction _ during years of child rearing and _ after children leave home.
Decrease
Improve
Cohabitation may __ affect men but not women’s well being.
Negatively
Divorce today may be less threatening to wellbeing in __ than in __.
Middle age
Young adulthood
Which marital status tends to be happier in middle age than any other marital status?
Married
Middle aged people tend to invest less time in _ than younger adults do but depends on them for emotional support and practical guidance.
Friendship
Friendships may have special importance for __.
Gays & lesbians
Transitional phase of parenting following the last child’s leaving the parent’s home.
Empty nest
Middle aged people tend to remain involved with their _ children and most are generally happy with the way their children turned out.
Adult
New life stage when middle aged children learn to accept and meet parents need to depend on them.
Filial maturity
Filial maturity is proposed by __, in which middle aged children, as the outcome of filial crisis, learn to accept and meet their parents need to depend on them.
Marcoen and others
Normative development in middle age, in which adults learn to balance love and duty to their parents with autonomy within a two way relationship.
Filial crisis
Middle aged adults squeezed by competing needs to raise or launch children and to care for elderly parents.
Sandwich generation
Condition of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion affecting adults who provide continuous care for sick or aged people.
Caregiver burn out
Care of children living without parents in the home of grandparents or other relatives with or without a change of legal custody.
Kinship care
In this stage, creative output may decline but improve in _.
Quality
