WEEK8: Psychology of ageing

Question 1

What is the importance of ageing?

Answer 1

• People over 50 years of age are the fastest growing age group in the UK.
• by 2031, nearly half population over 50y/o
• people over 60 now in the UK = 23% of population

Question 2

What are the 3 different approaches to the psychology of ageing?

Answer 2

• Bio-psychology:
  = focus on CNS ageing and associated mental function decline
• Bio-psycho-social approach:
  = focus on many sources of vulnerability and how individuals adjust
• Psychosocial approach:
  = focus on lifespan development, human character, personality over life

Question 3

What is the bio-psychological approach?

Answer 3

• as biology changes, psychology changes

- ageing brain is cause for psychological changes associated with age

Question 4

What does a cross sectional section of a brain show?

Answer 4

• loss of brain weight
• loss of brain cell numbers
• deterioration of brain power
• less cognitive skill

Question 5

What is the difference between cross sectional study and longitudinal study?

Answer 5

• cross sectional measure at one point in time

- longitudinal measure same person/group over a long period of time

Question 6

Talk about cross section vs longitudinal studies investigating loss of intellectual decline:

Answer 6

• education increases over years so each cohort is better than the previous (better education, sanitation, healthcare etc)- so COHORT ACCENTUATES LOSS
• Longitudinal data collection minimises the evidence of decline
• bc those able to and willing to be retested tend to be healtier, wealtheier and wiser than the ones who drop out or die

Question 7

What is the flynn effect?

Answer 7

• each generation becomes cleverer

Question 8

Is intellectual decline normal?

Answer 8

• greater age, greater drop in performance (seen through studies)
• more noticable in speed of processing rather than knowledge/ problem solving
• not all old people lose decline.
• little intellectual decline loss in 50-60 group
• more common decline in 80+, but still not all people in this group have decline

Question 9

When if intellectual decline abnormal?

Answer 9

• abnormal if in early age
• abnormal if crystallized intellegence is lost (LOSS OF WISDOM)
• Loss of wisdom (crystallised intelligence) is less common than loss of wit (fluid intelligence).
• Loss of intelligence shouldn’t affect daily life- if it does = PATHOLOGY

Question 10

Can you recover from a decline in intellect?

Answer 10

• Recovery from progressive (vs. acute) mental decline is hard
• should try primary prevention instead
• use of intellect and an enriched environment across lifespan= protective

Question 11

How do people react to ageing?

Answer 11

• Bernice Neugarten

Question 12

What is the Bernice Neugarten model?

Answer 12

• Ageing = physical, psychological and social decline
• needs adjustment
• this model says life course is bio- socially constructed with events e.g. birth, marriage, work, divorce, children moving away, retirement, widowhood etc.
• The more predictable the event (e.g. more socially predictable it is), less likely for individual adjustment needed
• less predictable an event e.g. child dying= more adjustment needed= higher risk of being stabilised

Question 13

What can life experiences make a person?

Answer 13

• acts as strength or weakness

Question 14

Give examples of how life experiences can act as a strength or a weakness for a person:

Answer 14

• Experiences earlier in life may confer unique strengths or vulnerabilities that make adjustment easier or harder.
• depression in early adult life helps older people cope with low income
• Dutch elders exposed to trauma of war in childhood/adolescence= more likely to suffer anxiety disorders

Question 15

Depending on character, how can adjustment take place?

Answer 15

• permanent physical impairment= stressor for many people
• some research shows if you express responsibility for something that has happened, easier to adjust
• if you don’t, and see it as your bad luck, harder to adjust

Question 16

What is the Socioemotional selectivity theory?

Answer 16

• knowing how long you have left to live
• change your motivation
• get away from gaining knowledge
• just focus on emotional satisfaction

e. g.
- young people want to study for a secure future- this is advantageous to them

Question 17

What is theory of the third age?

Answer 17

• view later life as time of self fulfilment
• you can follow own projects and plan lives
• only possible if you have physical and material (MONEY) well being
• this explains why older adults take active role in treatment/care.

Question 18

What is Erikson’s theory?

Answer 18

• at each stage of life, we go through particular psychosocial crisis
• the resolution of the crisis helps establish a trait/virtue
• this trait helps us in later life challenges

Question 19

What are Erikson’s stages of developments and what traits are seen in each stage?

Answer 19

Infancy= trust vs mistrust
Early childhood=  Autonomy vs Doubt
Play age= Initiative vs Guilt
School age= Industry vs inferiority
Adolescence= Identity vs Role diffusion
Young adulthood= Intimacy vs Isolation
Middle Adulthood= Generativity vs Stagnation
Late adulthood= Integrity vs Despair

Question 20

What are key adult qualities in Erikson’s model?

Answer 20

• Sense of identity (being someone)
• Capacity for intimacy (having someone)
• Experience of generativity (helping someone)
• Acquisition of integrity (taking responsibility)

Question 21

Why is it hard to assess older adults?

Answer 21

• mask their complaints

= Masked depression”

• especially older adult males are at high suicide risk
• hard to detect
• bc older adults minimise psychological symptoms
• 50% of suicide victims older than 60 had seen GP in the month of death with 26% in the week of death yet more than half only reported physical complaints

Question 22

What are the psychological constructs of ageing?

Answer 22

• Research and practice reflect and reinforce implicit models of ageing
• Some reinforce a notion of decline, and a categorisation of normal/natural versus abnormal/unnatural types of decline
• Others focus upon what living longer adds to human personality development
• Finally some steer a middle position looking at how ageing challenges personal adjustment and the factors that help or hinder such adjustment.
• The different approaches vary in the distinction they make between individuals and the ageing process