Week 11 Slides Flashcards
_______ helps seniors recover better from illnesses such as stroke
An optimistic view
____ _____ at age 65 is predictive of more rapid declines in later life
Chronic illness
_% of those aged 18-34 self-report their health as
fair or poor, where as _% of those over 65 years of age self-report their health as fair or poor
6%; 22%
Most Canadian seniors rated their
health as:
good or excellent
seniors whose physical and/or mental impairments are so extensive they cannot care for themselves.
Frail elderly
a measure of an individual’s ability to perform certain roles and tasks, particularly self help tasks and other chores of daily living.
Functional status
self help tasks such as bathing, dressing, and using the toilet
Basic Activities of Daily Living (BADLs)
more complex daily living tasks such as doing housework, cooking, and managing money
Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs):
The physical problems or diseases that are most likely to contribute to some functional disability in late adulthood are:
Arthritis and hypertension
As much as half of the decline in physical (and perhaps cognitive) function can be prevented through:
improved lifestyle, especially exercise
Physical exercise is even more important in ____ than in ____
later years than in youth
Benefits of exercise in later years include:
▪ Improves strength and motor skills after only 12 weeks of exercise
▪ Those who exercise lose less height over a 30- year period than did those who do not exercise
Gerontologists increasingly recommend _____ ____ in addition to aerobic activity and stretching.
strength training
Exercise can contribute to:
people living independent lives with dignity in late adulthood.
Physical exercise is linked to greater longevity and lower rates of diseases such as:
_ heart disease – cancer – osteoporosis – diabetes – gastrointestinal problems – arthritis
Research has revealed that exercise:
- Is linked to increased longevity.
- Is related to prevention of common chronic diseases.
- Is associated with increased effectiveness of treatment for many diseases.
- Improves older adults’ cellular functioning.
- Improves immune system functioning in older adults.
- Can optimize body composition and reduce the decline in motor skills as aging occurs.
- Reduces the likelihood that older adults will develop mental health problems, and can be effective in their treatment.
- Is linked to improved brain, cognitive, and affective functioning.
Canada’s Physical Activity Guide recommends:
30 to 60 minutes of exercise daily, which can be accumulated in segments of 10 minutes or longer
Obesity in late age is rising (__% for men, __% for women)
19% for men and 27% for women
Four aspects of nutrition are especially important in older adults:
- Getting adequate nutrition.
- Avoiding overweight and obesity.
- Deciding whether to restrict calorie intake.
- Determining whether to take vitamin supplements
Over __% of older adults in the U.S. are obese
40%
Theorized to slow the aging process by neutralizing free-radical activity
antioxidants such as vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta-carotene
Positive correlations of good health:
– not smoking – sleeping well – frequent walking – frequent socializing – healthy body mass index – eating fruits and vegetables – good oral health – low daily stress
__ ____ are strongly related to health problems.
Low incomes
Chronic diseases and conditions with slow onset and long duration are common in late adulthood. These include:
- Heart conditions.
- Diabetes.
- Asthma.
- Arthritis.
Nearly 60% of 65- to 74-year-olds die of:
cancer or cardiovascular disease.
____ is now the leading cause of death in middle-aged adults.
For those in the 75-to 84 and 85-and-over age groups, however, ____ is the leading cause.
cancer for middle-aged adults; cardiovascular disease for 75-85+ year olds.
___ _____ have high death rates for most diseases, including stroke, heart disease, lung cancer; and female breast cancer.
African Americans
inflammation of the joints accompanied by pain, stiffness, and movement problems, is especially common in older adults.
Arthritis
the most common form of arthritis. Some people call it degenerative joint disease or “wear and tear” arthritis. It occurs most frequently in the hands, hips, and knees.
Osteoarthritis
Bone loss begins at about age __ for both men and women.
In women, the process is accelerated by:
30; decreasing estrogen and progesterone levels in menopause
loss of bone mass with age, resulting in more brittle and porous bones
Osteoporosis
a disease characterized by low bone mass and deterioration of bone tissue, which can lead to increased risk of fracture. Known as the “silent thief”, bone deterioration can occur over a number of years without any symptoms.
Osteoporosis
The most common fractures associated with osteoporosis are:
in the hip, wrist, spine, and shoulder
Today, no single cause for _____ has been defined.
Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis can be prevented by:
– getting enough calcium during early adulthood, so the
peak level of bone mass is as robust as possible
– getting a bone mineral density test which can identify
osteoporosis long before it causes serious damage to
bones
Risk factors for osteoporosis include:
- Race: whites are at higher risk than other races
- Gender: women are at considerably a higher risk than men
- Weight: those who are underweight are at higher risk
- Timing of climacteric: Women who experience early menopause or have their ovaries removed are at higher risk because their estrogen levels decline earlier
- Family history
- Diet: low calcium, high levels of caffeine, alcohol
- Lack of exercise/mobility
Osteoporosis causes many people to walk:
with a stoop
The frequency of binge drinking is highest among:
older adults.
Substance abuse among older adults is often seen as:
the “invisible epidemic” in the United States, because it so often goes undetected.
Used to describe the onset of alcoholism after the age of 65.
Late-onset alcoholism
Late-onset alcoholism is related to:
loneliness, loss of a spouse, or a disabling condition.
As older adults live longer, ____ ___ ____ will need to be expanded.
disease management programs
__% of women and __% of men over age 65 live in long-term care institutions
5.6% of women and 3% of men
Most married ___ will have a spouse until they die, but most married ___ will live alone for many years
men; women
In Canada, ___ ___ is the most common choice among unmarried elders
living alone
Predictability factors that a single older adult in Canada will live with a child or with other relatives include:
– Health
– Income
– Adult children’s characteristics
– Public home care and social support services
Factors related to health and survival in a nursing home are:
the patient’s feelings of control and self-determination.
In a study by Rodin and Langer (1977), nursing home residents who were encouraged to feel more in control of their lives were:
more likely to be alive 18 months later than those who were treated as being more dependent on the nursing home staff.
According to Bill Thomas (The Eden Alternative), the three plagues of nursing homes are:
- Loneliness
- Boredom
- Helplessness
The Eden Alternative (Bill Thomas) involves:
- IDENTITY—being well-known; having personhood; individuality; having a history
- GROWTH—development; enrichment; expanding; evolving
- AUTONOMY—liberty; self determination; choice; freedom
- SECURITY—freedom from doubt, anxiety, or fear; safety; privacy; dignity; respect
- CONNECTEDNESS—belonging; engaged; involved; connected to time, place, and nature
- MEANING—significance; heart; hope; value; purpose; sacredness
- JOY—happiness; pleasure; delight; contentment; enjoyment
For the old-old and oldest-old, the largest declines involve:
speed or unexercised abilities
The hardware of the mind, reflecting the neurophysiological architecture of the brain. Involve speed and accuracy of the processes.
Cognitive mechanics
The culture-based software programs of the mind. Include reading and writing skills, language comprehension, educational qualifications, professional skills, and types of knowledge that help to master or cope with life.
Cognitive pragmatics
___ ____ may decline in old age, but ___ ____ may actually improve.
Cognitive mechanics; cognitive pragmatics
Cognitive mechanics have a ____ foundation; cognitive pragmatics have an ____ foundation.
biological/genetic; experiential/cultural
The speed of processing information in late adulthood:
• Correlated with physical aspects of aging.
• Accumulated knowledge may compensate.
• Impaired visual processing speed is linked to vehicle
accidents.
Slow processing predicts an increase in ___ and is linked to the emergence of ____
falls; dementia
Two of the best predictors of living longer include:
processing speed and health status
focusing on a specific aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that are irrelevant.
Selective attention
Concentrating on more than one activity at the same time
Divided attention
Focused and extended engagement
Sustained attention
aspects of thinking that include planning, allocating attention, detecting and compensating for errors, monitoring progress, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.
Executive attention
On virtually all “everyday” tasks, older adults recall less well than younger adults, But _______ gives the elderly some recall advantage
task-specific prior knowledge
Age-related memory decline is associated with:
Changes in the ratio of grey to white matter in the brain
This is now seen as a key factor in the declines of memory in late adulthood:
Loss of information-processing speed
Memory without conscious recollections; skills and routine procedures. Less likely to be affected by aging.
Implicit memory
The facts and experiences that individuals consciously know and can state. Declines as a person ages which impairs access to autobiographical events and the details involved.
Explicit memory
Older adults remember more events from the second and third decades of their lives
Reminiscence bump
Remembering something that has happened recently: Younger adults outperform older adults
Retrospective Memory
Remembering an event in the future, like a doctor’s appointment: Older adults outperform younger adults in a natural setting, such as their home, but do not excel in a laboratory setting where there are no external memory cues such as a calendar or reminder note
Prospective Memory
Factors that influence an older adult’s performance on memory tasks include:
health, education, and SES
Skills that also decline in older adulthood include:
Engaging in goal-directed behaviour and exercising self-control
Aspects that especially decline in later adulthood are:
- Updating memory representations relevant for the task at hand.
- Replacing old, no longer relevant information.
When older adults engage in complex working tasks:
their cognitive functioning shows less age-related decrease
Successive generations have been healthier in late adulthood as:
Better treatment for a variety of illnesses have been developed.
Changes in cognitive activity patterns might result in:
Disuse and consequent atrophy of cognitive skills.
The engagement model of cognitive optimization emphasizes how intellectual and social engagement can buffer age-related declines in intellectual development.
An increasing number of studies indicate that cognitive retraining is possible to some degree:
• Training can improve the cognitive skills of may older
adults, but
• There is some loss in plasticity in late adulthood
Older adults who challenge themselves with complex mental activities can:
delay or even reverse the normal decline in brain mass that is part of primary aging
Mental activities that likely benefit the maintenance of
cognitive skills include:
- Reading books
- Crossword puzzles, and
- Going to lectures and concerts
Sustained engagement in cognitively demanding, novel activities:
improves episodic memory
The effectiveness of brain games have often been:
exaggerated
a discipline that studies links between the brain and cognitive functioning.
Cognitive neuroscience
Aging and changes in the brain can influence ___ ___, and changes in ___ ___can influence the brain.
cognitive functioning; cognitive functioning
Neural circuits in the brain’s ____ ____decline,
linked to poor complex reasoning, cognitive inhibition etc.
prefrontal cortex
Older adults are more likely to use ___ ____ to
compensate for declines.
both hemispheres
Functioning of the _____ declines to a lesser
degree than functioning of the _____
hippocampus; frontal lobes
Patterns of neural decline are more dramatic for:
retrieval than for encoding
As attentional demands increase, functioning in areas
of the ____ and ____ lobes involved in cognitive
control becomes less effective
frontal and parietal
Cortical thickness in the frontoparietal network:
predicts executive function in older adults
Older adults have less effective:
connectivity between brain regions
Denise Park and Patricia Reuter-Lorenz propose a neurocognitive scaffolding view:
• Increased activation in the prefrontal cortex reflects an adaptive brain that is compensating for declining neural structures and function and declines in various aspects
of cognition.
• Scaffolding involves the use of complementary neural circuits.
Exercise—walking one hour a day three days a week:
appears linked to increased volume in the frontal and temporal lobes.
unable to retrieve information despite feeling that they should be able to. Difficulty understanding speech in certain contexts
Tip-of-the-tongue (T O T) phenomenon
Unable to retrieve information despite feeling that they should be able to.
Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon
Older adults speech is:
Lower in volume, slower, less precisely articulated, and less fluent. Non language factors may be involved, such as slower information-processing speed and a decline in working memory
Bilingualism may:
delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease
An increasing amount of older people continue to work. This is seen in ___ more than ___
women more than men.
Older adults who work beyond retirement age are motivated by factors involving:
financial status, health, knowledge, and purpose in life.
One of the best predictors of job performance in older adults is:
cognitive ability
Older workers:
have lower rates of absenteeism, fewer accidents, and higher job satisfaction
One study of older workers found that adaptive competence in older workers on the job was linked to:
- Accurately self-evaluating one’s skills and values;
- Being positive about change; and
- Participating in a supportive work environment
In the United States in 2017, the average retirement age for men was __ and for women was __
64 for men; 62 for women
Approximately ___ retired Americans return to work after they have retired.
7 million
____ has the earliest average retirement age—60 years old for men, 61 years old for women
France
____ has the oldest retirement age—72 for men, 73 for women.
Korea
Antecedents for early retirement:
- Workplace organizational pressures;
- Financial security; and
- Poor physical and mental health.
Older adults who adjust best to retirement are:
- Healthy, active, and have adequate income.
- Better educated.
- Connected with extended social networks and family.
- Satisfied with their lives before retiring.
Two main worries of individuals as they approach retirement are:
- Having to draw retirement income from savings.
* Paying for health-care expenses.
The average retirement age dropped from age __
in 1982 to __ years of age by the year 2000.
That rose to over __ years of age in 2015, and
continues to increase
64.9 to 61; 63
Reasons for retirement:
- Age
- Health
- Family Considerations
- Financial support
- Work characteristics
