biological, behavioral and psychosocial phenomena in older adults

focus on health and normative development

What milestones is this person acheiving?

ex: someone getting married at 60 considered socially young

more older adults demographically than ever before

baby boomers are getting into older adulthood

-older adulthood is misunderstood

13% of the pop

Things that happen to everyone at certain times

enter school at 5, leave at 18, retire at 65

NURTURE

Quantitative values

person is passive being effected by the environment

NATURE

Environment plays less of a role, more about what comes from within

every point in development individuals have their own set of skills, abilities, and deficits that predict developmental outcomes. 

eclectic view, little bit of both sides

interaction between environment and organism predict outcomes

Select: what you are good at

Optimize: how you can use this skill to its full affect to live a better life NOT JUST LONGER LIFE

Compensate: make up for areas you are not as skilled with a new strategy

occurs throughout the lifespan

  is embedded in historical context

  is multi-dimensional, multi-directional, and multi-  disciplinary

  includes both gains and losses

  is plastic (i.e., variable within and between people)

Cohort: age group characteristics (what was going on for this generation when they were coming up?)

Time of measurement: what was going on when you measured this behavior

Sampling from people at different age groups at the same time (may run into cohort differences)

most common

confounds: age and cohort

checking in on the same group (or groups) of people over many years in certain incriments (every 10 years?)

confounds: Age and Time of Measurement

collect from 20yr olds in 1990, then 20yr olds in 2000, then 20 yr olds in 2010

confounds: cohort and time of measurement

combines cross sectional and longitudinal

collect from 30 and 50 year olds in 2000

then from 50 and 70 year olds in 2020

o   Life span of species determined by a genetic blueprint, or time clock, at the cellular level

Descriptive, cells stp working and you die

o   Members of a species are genetically programmed to live long enough to bear and read their young

§  Only live long enough to pass genes

ú  1500’s 30% made it to 60

·      Less supported scientifically

focus on random damage to vital systems that happen 

Secondary Aging

genetic blueprint, 

primary aging

an error occurs and gets replicated a bunch

o   Errors occur at the cellular level that cause cell death. These errors add up over time

§  Cells can only take so much and they make mistakes

body can only take so much, slow down and dont be so hard and you can preserve yourself

o   Exposure to stress released hormones that cause long-term physical breakdown. As we age our bodies take longer to recover from exposure and breakdown happens more rapidly. 

o   Free radical theory: molecular fragments grab on to molecules and are detrimental to functioning.

§  Grab molecule and ruin its day, longer we live-more molecules go awol and fuck with other molecules

·      Nature (genetic makeup) and nurture (environmental influences) play a role in how long we live.

·      Factors investigated for their role in predicting longevity

o   Marital status

o   Cognitive ability and reaction time

o   Subjective feelings about health

o   Feelings about emotional well-being

About 700 Catholic nuns in the order of the School Sisters of Notre Dame donated their brains to science to serve the mission of education even in death.

Nuns have relatively a homogeneous lifestyle limits the the number of lifestyle factors that influence aging.

Changes in skin and hair

Changes in musculoskeletal system

Decrease in reserve capacity

Osteoporosis (extreme loss of bone mass)

Deterioration of joints

Changes in respiratory and cardiovascular functioning

Decrease in reserve capacity

Hypertension, plaque buildup

Availability of Parter

Physical health and ability

if they enjoyed in when they were young, they'll enjoy it when they're old

weight peaks 20-30, by 100 drops 10%

·      Reduction with age in neurotransmitters at the synapses between neurons

o   Use diff parts of brain to solve stuff

·      Atrophy of dendrites that connect neurons

·      Changes in extent and pattern of brain activation with cognitive stimulation 

inverse of threshold

high threshold->low sensitivity

·      some change in touch and movement sensitivity, but compensate with other sensory cues

o   touch-how much pressure until you feel it

o   proprioception-put it in machine, how much movement for you to detect it

o   use other cues to detect where they are in space. No diff in tasks, but difference in where the cues are coming from and how they know

lens incease in size and thickness

hard to focus on close up objects=near sightedness

yellows-prob with color vision

senile cataracts-opaque create glare

macular degeneration-loss of nerve cells in retina(lose fine detail, reading and driving)

loss of high freq noises

loss of sounds (s,t,th,f,z)

Phonemic regression (hear it but cannot understand it)

Difficulty understanding speech in noisy conditions

occur in white dudes, exposure to noise, smoking, drinking and hypertension

talking to older adults like they are incompitant morons

• Reduced complexity of grammar
• Use of simpler words and more repetition
• Slower speech
• Shorter sentences
• Patronizing speech
• Terms of endearment (“Honey,”“dear”)
• Speaking too loudly
• Exaggerated prosody 

Distort perceptions of aging

         makes people feel more old and less able

Irritating and provokes negative emotions

         can lead to negative self-image, depression, anxiety

Not helpful

         directions provided in elderspeak do not increase performance. But, simplified sentence structure is beneficial overall

·      On average older adults do not perform as well as younger adults on test of reaction time.

·      The gap between young adult and older adult reaction time gets larger as tasks get more complex 

At the central (brain) level, information is processed more slowly

Less efficient processing of incoming information because older information is still being processed

Monitoring stable patterns of stimuli for any evidence of change

age related gap only for complex tasks or timed

·      We have a finite amount of cognitive resources, and when we divide attention we must split them among multiple tasks

o   HARDER AS OLDER, LESS RESOURCES LESS ABLE TO ATTEND TO 2 TASKS

·      Age-related differences when demands of the tasks exceed older adults’ attentional resources/capacity

·      Has meaningful real life implications for multitasking

o   OLDER ADULTS LESS LIKEY TO DO A BUNCH OF STUFF AT ONCE, YOUNG=MULTI-TASK///OLD=LESS LIKELY TO MULTI-TASK

GORILLA SUIT

·      Paying attention to relevant information and ignoring distracting information

·      It requires cognitive resources to ignore distracting stimuli

·      Age-related differences when the situation makes it difficult to ignore distracting stimuli

·      STOOP COLOR TEST

·      Quantity of processing resources declines with age

·      Frontal lobes are susceptible to effects of aging, affecting decision making and processing of multiple streams of stimuli

o   MRI EVIDENCE

§  Old lights up more than a younger person (NEED MORE ACTIVITY TO DO SAME THING)

Hemisphyric Assymetry Reduction in Older Adults

·      Not all older adults show these effects.

·      Older adults who continue to perform well compensate for decreased processing speed by using both sides of their brain for the task

success w/ using both sides of brain instead of just one

Involve emotion in task levels the playing feild

·      In order to regulate their emotions, older adults are likely to process positive emotional information at a deeper level (Carstensen, Fung, & Charles)

·      Processing emo at deeper level

·      Pos emo decreases less

·      Young remember neg and pos, as get older remember less neg and more pos