Physical Development

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Physical Development
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Physical Development

• What Changes?
• Biological aging
• Physical
• Physiological and sensory
• Health status

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Biological Aging

• Deterioration of organism from time-dependent,
  irreversible changes
• Intrinsic to all
• Human life span fixed, but life expectancy at
  birth changing

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Females 82 yearsMales77 years
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Human Survival Curve
Approaching rectangular shape
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• Primary aging
• Senescence
• Weakening/decline of body
• Normal process
• Secondary aging
• Increase in rate of senescence due to extrinsic
  factors
• Environment (UV light cataracts noise
  pollution hearing loss)
• Behaviour (smoking decline in respiration)

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• Primary aging
• Sensory
• physical
• Physiological
• Musculo-skeletal
• Theories of aging
• Factors affecting health
• Trends in disability

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Sensory Changes

• Gradual decrease in sensory capacity
• Often undermine cognitive functioning

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Vision

• Field of vision restricts (changing retinal
  metabolism)
• Presbyopia Accommodation declines (loss of near
  vision from decreased flexibility of lens)
• Sensitivity to glare, recovery time increases

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• Colour sensitivity declines (70 years)
• Blue/green discrimination difficulty due to
  yellowing of lens
• Dark adaptation decreases reduced light
  transmitting properties of lens

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Hearing

• Presbycusis
• Decreased sensitivity to high-frequency sounds
• Taste, smell
• Taste not affected
• Smell diminishes in mid-50s

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Theories of Aging
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• Programmed theory
• Metabolic theory
• Damage to mitochondria impairs function in older
  cells
• Restricted diet?

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• Stochastic theories
• Random wear and tear
• Free radicals
• Reactive molecules produced in cell from oxygen
  metabolism
• Oxygen-free radical
• Accumulate, destroy fats, protiens critical to
  cell functioning
• Damage DNA
• Genetic therapy?
• Diet antioxidant enzymes neutralize free radicals

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Anti-oxidants
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Physical Health

• Mortality death rate (deaths per 100,000 per
  year)
• Dropping
• Morbidity prevalence of disease in a population
• Chronic (long-term)
• Acute (short, suddent)

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• Disability
• Inability to perform activities of daily living
• Later in life, shorter duration
• Vitality
• Subjective rating of health and energy

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Factors affecting health

• Gender
• Mortality men higher than women
• Morbidity women higher than men
• Chronic womengtmen
• Serious acute mengtwomen
• Heart disease diagnostic procedures, treatment,
  protective factors may have different effects on
  women than on men

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Factors

• Income
• Directly related to perception of health
• Age
• Much variation
• Young adulthood
• Good health
• Few hospitalizations
• Respiratory ailments most common (colds)
• Few chronic ailments
• Fatal diseases rare
• Leading causes of death M accidents/F cancer

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• Middle adulthood
• Common daily symptoms
• Musculo-skeletal problems (pain, stiffness in
  joints)
• Respiratory ailments (colds)
• Disease more commonplace
• Chronic main source of discomfort
• Arthritis, hypertension, sinusitis, heart
  conditions, hearing impairments
• Fatal diseases diabetes, ateriosclerosis,
  emphysema, cancer
• Death heart disease, cancer

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• Late Adulthood
• Common musculoskeletal symptoms (arthritis)
• 90 pain symptoms, stiffness

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• Acute problems diminish sharply
• Predominant arthritis, hypertension, heart
  conditions, hearing impairments
• More severe than in middle adulthood
• Limit work and leisure actiities
• Hospital stays life-threatening diseases
• Death heart disease, cancer, stroke

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• Subjective evaluation of health declines with age
  (less than expected)
• Types of symptoms change
• Rate of acute conditions drops, chronic rises
• Nonfatal disease arthritis, sensory impairments
• Fatal increase with age
• Limitations to daily activities increase with age

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Trends in disabilitly

• Compression-of-Morbidity hypothesis
• James Fries
• Prevention, better treatment
• Portion of life spent in disease and disability
  compressed, delayed
• Poor health later in life, shorter duration
• More healthy years
• Lack of data on incidence of disease and
  disability
• But falling rates of disability among elderly,
  falling rates of chronic disease

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Successful Aging

• Hardiness and thriving (Perls, 1995)
• Genetic determiners of hardiness in oldest old
• Adaptive capacity (ability to overcome disease or
  injury)
• Functional reserve how much of organ required
  for adequate performance (determines ability to
  deal with disease)

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• More hardy
• Slower rate of progress
• Higher threshold
• Symptoms of age-related disease (e.g.,
  Alzheimers) appear later
• Morbidity, mortality, disability compressed into
  shorter period

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• More hardy
• Slower rate of progress of symptoms of disease
  than in less hardy
• Threshold for disease lowers more slowly

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• Symptoms of age-related disease (e.g.,
  Alzheimers) appear later (b vs. a)
• Morbidity, mortality, disability compressed into
  shorter period

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Possible explanations for hardiness

• Longevity genes increased resistance against
  oxygen radicals
• Slow rate of damage
• Low complement of deleterious genes
• E.g., Apolipoprotien E (apo-E) related to risk of
  Alzheimer's
• Gene for protein apo-E less prevalent in
  oldest-old survivors
• 18 of 90-103 year-olds
• 25 of under-65 year-olds

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• Adaptive capacity (ability to cope with and
  overcome disease or injury) higher in more-hardy
• Functional reserve (how much of an organ is
  required for its adequate performance) higher

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• Autopsy studies of healthy oldest-old brains
• No outward signs of disease, but level of
  neurofibrillary tangles would indicate dementia
  in younger brain
• Excess reserve of brain function compensates for
  processes damaging the brain

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Two Basic Principles of Normal Aging

• Variability of aging rates
• Longitudinal studies (e.g., Baltimore Study)
• Aging rates vary remarkably (60 year olds like
  40 some 40 year-olds like 60, physically)
• Differences in appearance mirrored on
  physiological tests
• Variability increases as age increases
• Individual aging rates vary across years, and
  across physical systems

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• Variability of Aging Patterns
• Several aging paths
• Cross-sectional research
• Some functions decline in a regular way over time
• Other functions are stable, unchanged or decline
  only in terminal phase of life

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• Physiological loss, but only when an age-related
  illness is experienced
• E.g., heart disease correlated with a decline in
  heart pumping capacity with age
• Without heart disease, pumping capacity as well
  at age 70 as at age 30

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• Terminal Loss Pattern
• Loss in a normally stable function may be sign of
  impending death
• E.g., immune system of lymphocytes (white
  blood cells) stable normally stale
• Decline occurred in minority of Baltimore Study
  sample
• Reported good health good physical exams
• At next follow-up for study subgroup more
  likely to have died

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• Loss occurs, but body compensates for the change
• E.g., brain neural loss but robust individual
  cell growth (new dendrites, new connections) may
  help preserve thinking and memory
• Physical Aging not only loss
• Stability
• Resiliency
• Capacity for growth

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Term Test 1

• 50 MC
• 5 (out of 7) short answer

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Ideas and Issues

• Why study adult development
• Demographic changes
• Life-span perspective
• Social Realities of Aging
• Special needs
• Stereotypical attitudes
• Ageism

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Research in Adult Development

• Developmental research designs
• Special problems in studying adult development
• Sources of bias
• Identifying samples

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Theories and Psychosocial Development

• World Views
• Contextual
• Organismic
• Mechanistic

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Psychosocial Development

• Contextual
• Bronfenbrenner Ecological systems theory
• Neugarten Timing of Events
• Organismic
• Stages (psychoanalytic)
• Erikson
• Levinson

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• Mechanistic
• Trait approach
• McCrae Costa Five-Factor model
• Stability vs. change in adult personality
  development

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Identity

• Self-concept
• Erikson
• James Marcia

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Physical Development

• Biological aging
• Primary, secondary
• Physical changes
• Body systems (heart, lungs, musculoskeletal)
• Sensory systems (vision, hearing)
• Theories of Aging
• Programmed
• Stochastic
• Hardiness in Oldest-Old