week 2 Flashcards
What is the lifespan perspective?
o Lifespan perspective: an integrative, life-span view of individual growth and change
- Looks at multiple interesting factors that impact change
What are contextual influences on development?
o Contextual influences on development: factors that impact change such as sex, ethnicity, social class, income, religion, culture
Contextual influences on development attempt to
Explain the underlying processes of development
Models of individual-environment interactions combines both
views on nature and nurture to explain that there are both individual and environmental factors that contribute to growth and aging
What have researchers started to understand about nature vs. nurture in respect to intelligence?
o Researchers began to understand that neither influence alone could account for individual differences in performance on intelligence tests
What is niche picking?
o Genetic and environmental factors work together to influence the direction of a child’s life
o Children pick out their niche in which they develop their talents and abilities
o Further involvement in activity improves their ability
What is the organismic modeL?
o Heredity drives the course of development throughout life
o Changes over time occur because the individual is programmed to exhibit certain behaviours at certain ages in a stage step-wise fashion
What is the mechanistic model?
o People’s behaviour gradually changes over time, shaped by the outside forces that cause them to adapt to their environments
o Growth throughout life occurs by exposure to experiences that present new learning opportunities
Interactionist model:
o Genetics and the environment interact in complex ways to produce effects on the individual
o Individuals actively shape their own development
o Nature AND nurture
o Development reflects interactive processes between genetics and the environment
Plasticity in development: individuals can alter the rate and direction of what?
o Individuals can alter the rate and direction of the changes associated with the aging process
Ways to promote plasticity:
§ Active interventions (ex: mental and physical exercise)
§ Avoid risky behaviours
o Compensation in aging is a common example of plasticity
Reciprocity in development looks as development as purely environmental. What are three important facts of reciprocity in development?
· People both influence and are influenced by the events in their lives
· Your past life events influenced your current choices
· The effect you have on your environment will affect subsequent events in your life
Ecological perspective was created by brofenbrenner. What is the 5 level of enviornment/systems
o Microsystem: the setting in which people have their daily interactions
o Mesosystem: the realm of the environment in which interactions take place among 2 or more microsystems
o Exosystem: environments that people do not closely experience on a regular basis but have an impact
o Macrosystem: larger social institutions, indirect influence through exosystem
o Chronosystem: the changes that take place over time
What is the focus of the life course perspective?
· Norms, roles, & attitudes about age have an impact on the shape of each person’s life
· “course” à the course or progression of a person’s life events
o Heavily shaped by society’s views of what is appropriate and expected to occur in connection with particular ages
What is a social clock?
o The expectations for the ages at which a society associates with major life events
o Set the pace for how people think they should progress through their family and work timelines
What is activity theory?
o The view that older adults are most satisfied if they are able to remain involved in their social roles
Disengagement theory:
o The normal (and desirable) and natural evolution of life causes older adults to loosen purposefully their social ties
Continuity Theory
o Whether disengagement or activity is beneficial to the older adult depends on the individual’s personality
Agism as a social factor in the Aging process: What is agism
· Ageism: a set of beliefs, attitudes, social institutions, and acts that denigrate individuals or groups based on their chronological age
Where does agism come from? Two theorys are essential, name them
o Terror management theory: people regard with panic and dread the thought that their lives will someday come to an end
o Modernization hypothesis: the increasing urbanization and industrialization of Western society is what causes older adults to be devalued
What is terror management theory?
o Terror management theory: people regard with panic and dread the thought that their lives will someday come to an end
What is modernization hypothesis?
o Modernization hypothesis: the increasing urbanization and industrialization of Western society is what causes older adults to be devalued
What is the multiple jeopardy hypotheses?
o Older individuals who fit more than one discriminated-against category are affected by biases against each of these categorizations
What is the age-as-leveller view
o As people become older, age overrides all other “isms”
o Single jeopardy of ageism instead of multiple jeopardy from a combination of “isms”
Inoculation hypothesis?
o Older adults, especially minorities and women have managed to become immune to the effects of ageism through years of exposure to discrimination and stereotyping
Psychological models of development in adulthood: Ericksons psychosocial theory description
· People pass through a series of 8 stages as they progress from birth through death
· Each stage of development is a crisis that reflects the combination of these influences
What is the epigenetic principle in Ericksons work?
o Each stage unfolds from the previous stage in a predestined order
o People may experience a psychosocial issue at an age other than the one shown where it crosses at the diagonal
What 3 stages in Erickson’s work are most prevalent in old age? Name and describe those 3
- intimacy vs. isolation- o Must make commitments to close relationships
o Establish a mutually satisfying close relationship with another person to whom a
- Generavity vs. stagnation:o Focus on psychosocial issues of procreation, productivity, and creativity
o Most common pathway to generativity is through parenthood
- ego integrity vs. despair: o Look back at experiences with acceptance
o Ability to look at and accept positive and negative attributes of life and the self
Piagets cognitive developmental theory: hypothesizes the existence of a set of underlying processes that allow to children to
achieve understanding and mastery of the physical world
Piaget believed that development involves continuing growth of the individual knowledge about the world through a set of
opposing, complementary processes
What are schema, assimilation, and accommodation?
Schemas: mental structures we use to understand and organize the world
Assimilation: use existing schemas as a way to understand the world
Accommodation: o Change schemas in response to new information about the world
o You change to fit the world
At certain points in childhood, there are majorshifts in children’s understanding of their experiences. Name the 4 stages
o Sensorimotor stage: early infancy
o Preoperational stage: preschool
o Concrete operations stage: middle childhood
o Formal operations stage: adolescence +
Piaget used what term for when assimilation and accommodation are perfectly balanced
equilibrium
Identity process theory: What is identity
· Identity: a set of schemas that the person holds about the self
o Physical self
o Cognitive abilities
o Personality
Identity process theory has 3 key terms. Name and explain them:
- identity assimilation- o A tendency to interpret new experiences in terms of existing identity
- identity accommodation- o People make changes in their identities in response to experiences that challenge their current view of themselves
- identity balance- o The dynamic equilibrium that occurs when people tend to view themselves consistently but can make changes when called for by their experiences
What is the main point of the multiple threshold model?
o Individuals realize that they are getting older through a stepwise process as aging-related changes occur
o Ex: the first threshold can be gray hair, for others loss of muscle strength
what 3 factors are apart of the selective compensation that is a part of the optimization model:
· Select activities of most importance
· Compensate for age-related changes
· Optimize performance of that activity
Behavioural approaches to aging in adulthood: What is genome and DNA?
· Genome: the complete set of instructions for building all the cells that make up an organism
· DNA: makes up the genome, a molecule that replicates itself and encodes info needed to produce proteins
What is genes and chromosomes?
· Gene: a functional unit of a DNA molecule that carries a particular set of instructions for producing a protein; vary in length
Chromosomes:
o Distinct, physically separate units of coiled threads of DNA and associated protein molecules
There are programmed aging theories; what do these theories propose?
· Propose that aging and death are built into the hard wiring of all organisms and therefore are part of the genetic code
What is the Gompertz function?
o Gompertz function: plots the relationship between age and death rates for a given species
What are telomeres and what happens to them as we age?
o Repetitive DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes, protecting the chromosomes
o Each cellular replication, telomers shorten until they are no longer present to protect the ends of chromosomes
What is the random error theory of aging?
· Aging reflects unplanned changes in an organism over time
· Mutations acquired over the organism’s lifetime lead to malfunctioning of the body’s cells
Cross-linking theory main point:
o Aging causes deleterious changes in cells of the body that make up much of the body’s connective tissue
Describe the free radical theory of aging:
o Aging is caused by the increased activity of free radicals that bond to other molecules and compromise the cell’s functioning
o Free radicals: unstable oxygen molecules produced when cells create energy
Describe descriptive (single-factor) research designs:
· Studies that catalogue information about how people perform based on their age but do not attempt to rule out social or historical factors
Age, cohort and time of measurement:
Age: literal age
cohort: used to describe the year or period of a person’s birth
time of measurement: the year in which a person is tested
Longitudinal designs involve cohort data in what way
· Cohort is followed repeatedly from one test occasion to another
· Determine whether participants have changed over time as a result of the aging process
Describe a cross-sectional design:
· Compare groups of people with different ages at one point in time
What is the most efficient research design?
· A set of 3 designs manipulating the variables of age, cohort, and time of measurement
· Combine the age, time, cohort variables in different sequences
Describe the measures of time-sequential design
organized by age and time of measurement
cohort-sequential design
o Cohorts are compared at different ages
o Examine the effects of cohort
cross-sequential design:
o Cohorts are examined at different times of measurement
