Week Twelve Flashcards
late adulthood
- Late adulthood is the fastest growing but least researched segment of the population
- More stereotypes about late adulthood than any other age group
- That old people offer nothing to society.
myths about ageing
- Disabled and diseased.
Set in old ways, unable to change.
young old
• ‘Young old’ (60 – 69 years) – as fit and forward-looking as 50-year-olds were some generations ago
third age
• ‘Third age’ (70 – 79 years) – many of them function better physically and psychologically than their parents did at age of 55
fourth age
• ‘Fourth age’ (80 years and over) – ‘old-old’ adults frail physical or mental health directly attributable to their advanced age
physiological capacities of 75 yo compared to 30yo
- half the lung capacity
- third of the cardiac output
- kidney capacity half
- hand grip, body wright and matabolism decreased.
cognitive ageing: Piaget
- Piaget: Formal operational thinking as the final stage of cognitive development
- Postformal thinking – lessened egocentrism of young adults and capacity to view world more relativistically
seattle study
- Seattle Longitudinal Study (Schaie, 1994) – ‘cohort obsolescence’ needs to be considered when considering cross-sectional evidence about changes in cognitive abilities with age
- Fluid and crystallised intelligence
- Intelligence skills have a divergent pattern.
- Crystallised intelligence (verbal and inductive reasoning) increases.
- Fluid intelligence peaks in early adulthood or adolescence and decreases over time.
cross-sectional studies
• Cross-sectional studies look at people at different ages at the same time. This study sees that generally capacities decrease with age, including perception and cognition.
indictive reasoning
Inductive reasoning is used to solve problems with procedural memory (crosswords, soduku etc.). In old age, inductive reasoning increases due to increased practice and spare time.
successful cognitive ageing
- Selective optimisation with compensation in order to balance gains and losses in cognitive functioning in old age (Baltes, 1987)
- When you start to realise you are getting older, to counteract these negative forces, we try to develop different strategies to cope.
wisdom
• Wisdom as ‘expertise in the fundamental pragmatics of life’ (Baltes, 1993, p. 615)
• Linked with the last Erikson stage of integrity vs. despair.
• Wisdom entails:
• Rich factual knowledge with exceptional scope, depth and balance
• Rich procedural knowledge about how to behave and seek meaning in life
• Tolerance, respect for context and values
• Awareness and skilled coping with uncertainty and change
• Wise solutions containing all these elements generally rare, but more common in older than in younger adult
According to Erikson resolution of the developmental task of late adulthood (integrity vs despair) produces wisdom
successful social ageing
Disengagement theory and activity theory take opposing perspectives on adapting to the loss of roles or activities that occurs in late adulthood
According to disengagement theory, the most success happens when the person disappears from society.
Activity theory says that optimal ageing occurs when the person stays active in society.
socioemotional selectivity ageing
- Changes in social motives due to people becoming more aware of the limited amount of time they have left
- Reshaping of one’s life in late adulthood to concentrate on what one finds to be important and meaningful in the face of physical decline and possible cognitive impairment
- The process becomes more important than the outcome.
- How do others view us and how do we view ourselves in old age.
defining death
- Death – the irreversible cessation of vital life functions.
- Dying – the end stage of life, in which bodily processes decline, leading to death.
- Previously absence of respiration and heartbeat
- Now criteria focus on brain death
- Definition critical for issues of organ transplant