Adulthood and Aging

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Adulthood and Aging
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Social Development
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Adulthood

• Play Stages of Adult Development (307) Segment
  23 from Psychology The Human Experience.

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Emerging Adulthood

• Developmental period between adolescence and
  adulthood

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Social Clock

• The culturally (societys) preferred timing of
  social events such as marriage, parenthood, and
  retirement
• The best timing for certain life events
• The timing varies from culture to culture.

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Social Development

• Erik Erikson described two fundamental themes
  that dominate adulthood love and work
• According to Erikson, the primary psychosocial
  task of early adulthood is to form a committed,
  mutually enhancing, intimate relationship with
  another person.
• During middle adulthood, the primary psychosocial
  task becomes one of generativity, to contribute
  to future generations through your children, your
  career, and other meaningful activities.

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Adult Friendships

• Female friends tend to confide in one another
  about their feelings, problems, and interpersonal
  relationships
• Male friends typically minimize discussions about
  relationships or personal feelings or problems
  instead, male friends tend to do things together
  that they find mutually interesting, such as
  activities related to sports or hobbies

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Marriage Family

• Today, many young adults postpone marriage so
  they can finish their education and establish a
  career
• As a general rule, we tend to be attracted to and
  marry people who are similar to us on a variety
  of dimensions, including physical attractiveness,
  social and educational status, ethnic background,
  attitudes, values, and beliefs
• Marital satisfaction tends to decline after the
  birth of the first child and rise again after
  children leave home
• Becoming a parent at an older age and waiting
  longer after marriage to start a family helps
  ease the adjustment to parenthood.

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Careers in Adulthood

• Researchers have found that close to a third of
  people in their late twenties and early thirties
  do not just change jobs within a particular
  field they completely switch occupational fields
  
• Dual-career families have become increasingly
  common
• Although many fathers are actively involved in
  child rearing, women still tend to have primary
  responsibility for child care
• Multiple roles seem to provide both men and women
  with a greater potential for increased feelings
  of self-esteem, happiness, and competence.
• The critical factor is not the number of roles
  that people take on but the quality of their
  experiences on the job, in the marriage, and as a
  parent.

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Social Changes and Lifes Commitments
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Erik Erikson

• Constructed an 8-stage theory of social
  development
• Each stage has its own psychosocial developmental
  task.
• The last 4 stages deal with Adolescence through
  late adulthood.

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Generativity

• Eriksons term for being productive and
  supporting future generations

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Commitment to Work

• Most high school/college students arent sure of
  their career goals.
• Happiness seems to be correlated with work that
  is challenging, provides a sense of
  accomplishment, and is interesting.

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Commitment to Love

• An important factor in adult happiness
• Lasting love includes
• Intimate self-disclosure
• Shared emotional and material support
• Similar interests and values

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Commitment to Marriage

• 90 of the population gets married
• 50 divorce rate
• 75 of those who have divorced remarry

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Commitment to Children

• Children result in a change in the marital
  relationship
• Potential disagreement on the division of labor
  with children

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Empty Nest

• The change married couples go through as a result
  of their children leaving home
• Not necessarily a negative event for couples

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Physical Changes of Middle Adulthood
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Adult Physical Development

• Genetics and lifestyle combine to determine
  course of physical changes
• Your unique genetic blueprint greatly influences
  the unfolding of certain physical changes during
  adulthood. Such changes vary significantly from
  one person to another.
• Staying mentally and physically active and eating
  a proper diet can both slow and minimize the
  degree of physical decline associated with aging.

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Typical Physical Progression

• Physical strength typically peaks in early
  adulthood, the twenties and thirties
• By middle adulthood, roughly from the forties to
  midsixties, physical strength and endurance
  gradually decline
• During late adulthood, from the mid-sixties on,
  physical stamina and reaction time tend to
  decline further and faster
• Aging and its effects on vision (NBC Report 2
  min.)

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Menopause

• The time of natural cessation of menstruation
• Referred to as the biological changes a woman
  experiences as her ability to reproduce declines
• Usually occurs between age 45 and 55
• Does not usually lead to depression

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Later Adulthoods Physical Changes
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Late Adulthood

• Old age as a time of poor health, inactivity, and
  decline is a myth.
• Activity theory of aginglife satisfaction is
  highest when people maintain level of activity
  they had in earlier years. See NBC Report (1 ½
  min.)
• The average life expectancy for men is about 74
  years for women, it is about 79 years.
• The majority of older adults live healthy,
  active, and self-sufficient lives. Only 4.5
  percent of those age 65 and over live in nursing
  homes. After 85, it is 20 percent.

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Physical Changes Vision
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Physical Changes Sense of Smell
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Physical Changes Hearing
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Physical Changes Hearing
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Diseases Related to Aging
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Alzheimers Disease

• A progressive and irreversible brain disorder
  characterized by gradual deterioration of memory,
  reasoning, language, and physical functioning

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Alzheimers Disease

• Play Alzheimers Disease (706) Module 19 from
  The Brain Teaching Modules (2nd edition).

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Alzheimers Disease

• Play Understanding Alzheimers Disease (1140)
  Segment 19 from The Mind Psychology Teaching
  Modules (2nd edition).

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Senile Dementia

• The mental disintegration that accompanies
  alcoholism, tumor, stroke, aging, or Alzheimer's
  disease

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Senile Dementia
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Parkinsons Disease

• Play Brain Transplants in Parkinsons Patients
  (1109) Module 31 from The Brain Teaching
  Modules (2nd edition).

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Cognitive Changes and Memory
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Aging and Memory
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Cognitive Changes and Transitions Intelligence
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Intellectual Ablities

• Psychologist K. Warner Schaie and his colleagues
  have found that general intellectual abilities
  gradually increase until ones early forties,
  then become relatively stable until about age 60,
  when a small but steadily increasing percentage
  of older adults experience slight declines on
  tests of general intellectual abilities.
• Schaie found that those who were better educated
  and engaged in physical and mental activities
  throughout older adulthood showed the smallest
  declines in mental abilities.

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Fluid Intelligence

• Ones ability to reason speedily and abstractly
• Can be used to solve novel logic problems
• Declines as people get older

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Crystallized Intelligence

• Ones accumulated knowledge and verbal skills
• Tends to increase with age

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Age and Verbal/Nonverbal Intelligence
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Memory and Aging

• Play Aging and Memory (1116) Segment 17 from
  The Mind Psychology Teaching Modules (2nd
  edition).

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A Lifetime of Well-Being
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Overall Life Satisfaction

• Most studies show the elderly as happy and
  satisfied with life.
• People tend to mellow with age.
• Most regrets focus on what the person didnt do
  rather than mistakes they have made in life.

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Overall Life Satisfaction
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Death and Dying
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Death and Dying

• In general, anxiety about dying tends to peak in
  middle adulthood, then to decrease in late
  adulthood
• Kubler-Ross stages of dying
• Denial
• Anger
• Bargain
• Depression
• Acceptance
• Not universally demonstrated
• Dying is as individual a process as is living.
• People cope with the prospect of dying much as
  they have coped with other stresses involved in
  living

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Reactions to Death

• Reactions to death are different from culture to
  culture.
• Attitudes toward death and dying are changing in
  the United States. --more
  openness
  --facing death with dignity hospice helps