Life Span Development Adulthood and Aging

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Life Span DevelopmentAdulthood and Aging

• Unit 2, Module 6

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Early Adulthood Transitions

• Eriksons Stage 6 Early Adulthood
• Approximate age 20 35
• Questions faced in this stage include
• Independent living/moving out of parents house
• Getting married
• Establishing a career
• Having children

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Emerging Adulthood

• Developmental Psychologists propose adding a new
  stage called emerging adulthood
• The transition from adolescence to adulthood
  continues to lengthen
• Young adults often take longer to establish their
  independence

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The Social Clock

• Societys commonly accepted judgment about the
  best timing for certain life events
• Getting a drivers license
• Getting married
• Living independently
• Social clocks have different settings in
  different cultures
• Changes in culture can alter the social clock
  within a culture

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Physical Changes and Transitions

• Middle Adulthood age 36 64
• More noticeable physical changes
• Women experience menopause
• Men experience a decline in testosterone levels
• The mid-life crisis is associated with this
  stage
• There is no statistical evidence that mid-life
  crisis occurs as a result of aging

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The Fear of Aging

• Why do people fear aging?
• Media impact Older people are often portrayed
  in negative ways
• Loss of attractiveness
• retin-A generation seeks the quick fix for
  physical signs of aging
• Confronting mortality

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Physical Changes

• Later Adulthood age 65 and over
• Senses of sight, smell, and hearing usually begin
  a steep decline after age 65 (see figure 6.1,
  page 102 in your text)
• Decreased muscle strength and stamina
• Immune system weakens
• Decrease in speed of neural (think brainwave)
  transmission

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Compensating for Older Age

• Exercise fosters brain cell development, and
  helps prevent heart disease and obesity
• Staying mentally active will help brain cell and
  neural activity
• Brain cell loss is leading cause of memory loss
• If you live to be 80, your brain will weigh 5
  less than it does now

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Diseases Related to Aging

• Alzheimers Disease
• Brain disorder characterized by progressive and
  irreversible destruction of brain cells
• Results in gradual deterioration of memory,
  reasoning, language and physical functioning
• Senile Dementia
• Mental disintegration
• Can be caused by alcoholism, tumor, stroke, or
  anything that causes substantial loss of brain
  cells

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Age Related Diseases

• Alzheimers has no known cure
• Certain medications can slow down the progression
  of the disease
• Not every older adult who forgets things has
  Alzheimers
• Memory loss is a normal part of aging

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Cognitive Changes and Transitions

• Memory
• Recall memory decreases in older individuals, but
  recognition remains relatively stable from age 20
  to 60
• Recall memory tasks give no clues to jog your
  memory neutral objects/ideas/concepts
• Recognition memory tasks involve meaningful
  objects/ideas/concepts

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Intelligence

• Fluid intelligence tends to decrease in later
  adulthood
• Crystallized intelligence tends to increase with
  age
• Research indicates that crystallized intelligence
  remains stable with age

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Social Changes Transitions

• The two events that most affect our social
  well-being during early and middle adulthood are
• Work or Generativity
• Love or Intimacy
• Erikson defines these as being productive (work)
  and forming close relationships (love)

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Lifes Commitments

• Work
• Choosing a career is an important and difficult
  decision
• Humans have an innate need to be or feel useful
• Contentment and challenge with ones career
  choice are central to happiness

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Lifes Commitments

• Love
• Vital to a happy adulthood
• Lasts longer and is more satisfying when it is
  marked by
• Intimate self-disclosure (sharing ones self)
• Shared emotional support
• Similar interests and values

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A Lifetime of Well-Being

• Most older, retired people report happiness and
  satisfaction in their lives
• The empty nest syndrome often results in a
  renewed sense of freedom
• Most older individuals experience less emotional
  conflict than young adults
• Regrets are often about things they didnt do as
  opposed to mistakes they made

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Ageism

• The tendency to categorize and judge people on
  the basis of their chronological age
• Negative effects of ageism
• Reduces self-esteem
• Reduces ability to participate in society
• Reinforces stereotyping

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Dying and Death

• Coping with the loss of a loved one is a
  challenge that each individual faces at some
  point in time
• Individual responses will vary
• When the death of a loved one is sudden and
  unexpected, individuals may experience profound
  grief and depression
• Depression can last for years

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Misconceptions of Death

• The popular belief that expressing strong grief
  immediately will lessen grieving period is not
  supported by evidence
• Stages of Grief
• There is no evidence to support the idea that we
  progress through predictable stages

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Different Perceptions of Death

• Death is perceived differently in different
  cultures
• In Africa, death is greeted as a way to rejoin
  ancestors
• Muslim nations expect outward and obvious
  expressions of grief over death
• In the United States attitudes towards death are
  changing towards acceptance and dignity in death

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Lessons from Mourners

• Can we learn from grief?
• Proves the importance of
• Tending relationships
• Resolving differences
• Expressing appreciation
• Avoiding future regrets by keeping our
  relationships healthy in the present

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Choices About Death

• Hospice Care
• Receiving medical attention in the comfort of
  ones home
• Terminal patients can spend their remaining days
  as pleasantly as possible
• Maintains human dignity
• Euthanasia medically assisted death
• What is your opinion?