W7 - stability change and ageing

Question 1

What is trait expression influenced by?

Answer 1

• social demands
• expectations
• social values
• biology
• individual circumstances
• these factors change with age

Question 2

What can be used to assess visual and spatial ability?

Answer 2

block design task

• involved a series of 9 blocks that the individual has to rearrange to create a pattern
• thesis easy to administer but does not distinguish between visual and spatial ability

Question 3

What do WAIS test scores suggest about age?

Answer 3

that intelligence does decline as we age in general

- but different cohorts could have scored differently due to different experiences

Question 4

What are the subsets of WAIS? (hold and don’t hold)

Answer 4

Hold = verbal scale - resistant to cognitive/age decline (info; comprehension; arithmetic etc) used on those with dementia and brain injury etc
Don’t hold = performance scale - cognitive/age decline sensitive (digit symbol; picture completion; block design etc)

Question 5

Welchsler abbreviated scale of intelligence?

Answer 5

• can test anyone from 6-90 years old

- scores are adjusted to age for comparison

Question 6

What are the four subsets of WASI?

Answer 6

Vocal = word and picture description
similarities = picture/word shared characteristics
block design = pattern completion with blocks
matrix reasoning = pattern completion on paper

Question 7

Difference between fluid and crystallised intelligence?

Answer 7

Fluid = innate intellectual power, think logically to solve new problems, not learnt 
crystallised = uses experience, education, 'wisdom' and knowledge is learnt

Question 8

Hampson & Goldberg 2006 study on the stability of the big 5…

Answer 8

• used 2404 school children
• followed up in 1998-2004
• suggested that greater coefficients across 40 years for extroversion conscientiousness than for openness, agreeableness and neuroticism
• level of neuroticism changed over age

Question 9

Milojev & Sibley 2014 study on personality across the lifespan

Answer 9

• survey of 3910 New Zealanders aged from 20-80
• ranked order of scores was relatively stable
• levels of stability varied
• increased stability 20x and 50s but decreased stability 50+ to age 80
• extraversion was most stable
• personality is not all that stable

Question 10

What is the default mode network?

Answer 10

• a large scale brain network best known to be active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest
  e. g. self-reference, thinking abut others, moral reasoning, autobiographical details

Question 11

Simon et al 2018 - associations between personality and the DMN using fMRI

Answer 11

• 365 individuals aged 20-80
• looked at brain function into age decline and dementia risk
• openness positively related to connectivity in the DMN
• neuroticism was negatively associated with both ventral and dorsal attention networked
  agreeableness was negatively related with dorsal attention network

Question 12

Do we change as much as we think study?

Answer 12

WOODRUFF 1983
- 1944 tested for personal and social adjustment
25 years later tested again

• people changed less than they thought they had
  this criticised because it relied on self report measure ad memory that naturally declines over time

Question 13

What is disengagement theory?

Answer 13

Cumming & Henry 1961

• emotional “blunting” with age - you feel less as you get older
• idea that older people are more withdrawn from society