unit 7

Question 1

What is the definition of life expectancy?

Answer 1

Life expectancy is the number of years an individual born in a particular year can expect to live, starting at any age.

Question 2

What factors contribute to the dramatic gains in average life expectancy?

Answer 2

Improved nutrition, medical treatment, sanitation, and safety are factors that contribute to increased life expectancy.

Question 3

What is healthy life expectancy?

Answer 3

Healthy life expectancy is the number of years a person born in a particular year can expect to live in full health, without disease or injury.

Question 4

What are some of the key physical changes that occur in the nervous system during late adulthood?

Answer 4

Neuron loss occurs throughout the cerebral cortex, with greater shrinkage in the frontal lobes and corpus callosum; the cerebellum and hippocampus also lose neurons. However, the brain can compensate by forming new synapses and, to a limited degree, generating new neurons.

Question 5

What are some common vision problems in late adulthood?

Answer 5

Cataracts and macular degeneration are common vision problems in older adults.

Question 6

How does hearing change in late adulthood?

Answer 6

Older adults commonly experience a loss of ability to hear high-frequency sounds, difficulty with word discrimination, and problems hearing under noisy conditions.

Question 7

What sleep changes are common in late adulthood?

Answer 7

Older adults find it harder to fall asleep, stay asleep, and sleep deeply. They also tend to have earlier bedtimes and waking times.

Question 8

What is the difference between primary and secondary aging?

Answer 8

Primary aging refers to genetically influenced declines that affect all members of our species, while secondary aging refers to declines due to hereditary defects and negative environmental influences.

Question 9

What is frailty in older adults and what contributes to it?

Answer 9

Frail older adults have extreme infirmity, wasted muscle mass, severe mobility issues, and potentially cognitive impairment. While primary aging contributes, secondary aging through genetic disorders, unhealthy lifestyle and chronic disease plays a larger role.

Question 10

What are the main characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 10

Alzheimer’s disease is a severe form of dementia characterized by subtle memory difficulties, repetitive conversation, disorientation, and eventually, the failure to recognize family or perform routine tasks. It includes neurofibrillary tangles and plaques in the brain.

Question 11

What is selective optimization with compensation in the context of cognitive development?

Answer 11

It refers to older adults narrowing their goals, selecting personally valued activities, and finding new ways to compensate for losses.

Question 12

How does memory change in late adulthood?

Answer 12

Memory failure increases, especially on explicit memory tasks. Recall of context, source, and temporal order of events declines, while automatic forms of memory suffer less.

Question 13

What are associative memory deficits?

Answer 13

They refer to the difficulty in creating and retrieving links between pieces of information. Older adults perform worse on tests that require association of items.

Question 14

What is the reminiscence bump?

Answer 14

The reminiscence bump refers to the tendency for older adults to have their best recall for events that occurred between the ages of 10 and 30.

Question 15

How does prospective memory change in late adulthood?

Answer 15

Older adults do better on event-based prospective memory tasks than on time-based tasks. They also tend to use external memory aids.

Question 16

How does problem-solving change in late adulthood?

Answer 16

Hypothetical problem-solving declines, but older adults are effective at everyday problem-solving as long as they perceive problems as under their control and important.

Question 17

What is wisdom, according to the sources?

Answer 17

Wisdom involves extensive practical knowledge, the ability to reflect and apply that knowledge, emotional maturity, and altruistic creativity. Age is not a guarantee of wisdom.

Question 18

What is Erikson’s theory of ego integrity versus despair?

Answer 18

It’s the final life crisis where individuals review their lives to determine if it was a success or failure. The positive resolution of this crisis leads to the ego quality of wisdom.

Question 19

What are Robert Peck’s three tasks of ego integrity?

Answer 19

They include ego differentiation, body transcendence, and ego transcendence.

Question 20

What is the positivity effect in older adults?

Answer 20

It’s a bias toward emotionally positive information, characterized by selective attention and better recall of positive over negative information.

Question 21

What is the purpose of life review?

Answer 21

Life review involves calling up past experiences with the goal of achieving greater self-understanding, and for Erikson, is essential to achieve ego integrity.

Question 22

How is the self-concept of older adults described?

Answer 22

Older adults tend to have more secure, multifaceted self-concepts with more positive than negative self-evaluations.

Question 23

How do ‘hoped-for selves’ and ‘feared selves’ impact older adults?

Answer 23

Those who actively pursue their hoped-for selves gain in life satisfaction, while feared selves, especially regarding physical health, are prominent concerns.

Question 24

How do the ‘Big Five’ personality traits change in older adults?

Answer 24

The Big Five personality traits remain relatively stable, with a modest gain in agreeableness and a decline in openness to experience. However, engaging in cognitively challenging activities may promote openness to experience.

Question 25

How does the social world of older adults change, according to the sources?

Answer 25

The size of social networks and the amount of social interaction decline, but older adults are generally satisfied and less depressed than younger adults.

Question 26

What is disengagement theory?

Answer 26

It proposes a mutual withdrawal between older people and society in anticipation of death.

Question 27

What is activity theory?

Answer 27

It suggests that social barriers, not desires, cause declining rates of interaction in older adults.

Question 28

What is continuity theory?

Answer 28

It proposes that older adults strive to maintain consistency between their past and anticipated future in activities and interests.

Question 29

What is socioemotional selectivity theory?

Answer 29

It states that social networks become more selective with age, with older adults emphasizing emotionally fulfilling relationships.

Question 30

How does retirement affect older adults according to the sources?

Answer 30

Retirement often involves a decline in income, but it also provides time for leisure and volunteer activities that can be associated with better health.