PSYC 322 MT 2

Anxiety About Aging Scale

• Questionnaire with questions from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree) about self-perceptions on aging

• Has “subscales”:

  • Fear of Old People

  • Psychological Concerns

  • Physical Appearance

  • Fear of Losses

Possible international protections for older adults rights

• UN Convention/Treaty

  • Sets a legally binding framework and structured guidelines/mechanisms to combat ageism and elder abuse

  • For many different countries

Necessary improvements for Canadian rights for older adults

• Housing & Transportation

• Income

• Caregivers/Social Support Workers

• Services

• Rights & Recognition

Usual, Pathological, and Optimal Aging

• Standard, normal style of aging with gradual declines in physical health

• Aging characterized with the presence of age-related diseases/clinical impairments

• Aging that minimizes any physiological/mental loss at all while maximizing well-being, living comfortably with purpose

Research has shifted towards the last because of how aging is a gradient, not just one or the other for each component

Successful aging (Rowe and Kahn)

• Hierarchical model used to categorize aging

  • Avoiding disease & disability (which then leads to…)

  • High cognitive and physical function (which then leads to…)

  • Engagement with life (which then leads to…)

  • “Successful aging”

Critiques of Rowe & Kahn (1997) model of successful aging

• “Success” suggests that there is a standard to age well when many people can age meaningfully/successfully/fulfillingly without meeting that standard

• Three components is too narrow

• Aldwin & Igarashi (2016) suggest adopting “optimal aging” instead

Optimal aging

• Proposed by Aldwin & Igarashi (2016)

• Involves maintaining optimal functioning & adapting despite (limiting) circumstances

• Living comfortably with purpose

Psychosocial Variables in Aging

• Attitudes & Optimism

• Sense of Purpose

• Emotional regulation

• etc.!!!

Ecological Model of Aging

• Environmental adaptation: Older adults’ environments can be modified to match current competence level

  • Enhances well-being and improves aging

• Demands (“press”)

  • Negative, meaning the environment exceeds a person’s abilities

  • Positive, meaning the environment enables the older individual to adapt

Selective Optimization w/ Compensation Model of Aging

• Individual adaptation: Individuals can select high functioning domains and optimize them while compensating and minimizing losses for declining domains

Information Processing Model

A model that describes how information is processed by our brain in terms of sensory memory, attention, short-term memory, and long-term memory

Types of Attentionial Processes

• Sustained attention

• Selective attention

• Divided attention

Sustained attention

• Maintaining attention over a period of time

• Mackworth clock task

  • Red ball going around in a circle one dot at a time, hit skip when skips one position

• The only type of attention process that have mixed results in terms of aging

  • Sometimes reduced, preserved (same), or improved

Selective Attention

• Ability to pay attention to certain stimuli while ignoring others

• Stroop task

  • Words that are names of colors which are not the color themselves (e.g. the word RED that is colored green)

• Dichotic listening task

  • Different words presented in different ears, participants asked to recall words from an individual ear

• Reduced performance when aging

Divided attention

• Doing more than one task at one time

• Dual-task paradigm

  • Participants asked to do two things at once

  • e.g. keep red dot in a box while pressing a key when a letter flashes on the screen

Age-related changes in attentional processes

• General reduced performance

• With the exception of sustained attention, which have mixed findings

Short-term memory processes

• Primary Memory

  • Holding information how it was received (preserved performance)

  • e.g. remembering and repeating a phone number

• Working Memory

  • Processing and manipulating information (reduced performance)

  • e.g. remembering a string of digits long enough to reverse it or subtract two from each digit, doing puzzles and problems

Long-term memory processes

• Procedural

  • Skills and actions (preserved performance)

  • e.g. driving a car

• Semantic

  • General knowledge (preserved, improved performance)

  • e.g. recalling trivia and speaking a language

• Episodic

  • Recalling experiences (reduced performance)

    • NOTE that it is worse for newer memories created in older age

  • e.g. recalling and remember first day at UBC

• Prospective

  • Store that contains intentions for the future (mixed results)

    • in a lab setting, results for older adults are worse but better in day-to-day life than younger people

  • e.g. recalling a doctor’s appointment

Fluid vs. Crystallized Intelligence

• Problem solving (reduced performance)

• Depth and application through experience (preserved/improved performance)

Cattell-Horn-Carroll Model of Intelligence

A model of understanding intelligence, noted as ‘g’, by different subtypes; in this course used to study and analyze effects of aging

• e.g. Gf, Gsm, Gs, etc.

• in aging, 3 categories of vulnerable, expertise, and sensory-perceptual

Vulnerable abilities (CHC model)

• Brain efficiency and processing, declines steadily in aging

• Examples:

  • Gf (Fluid Reasoning)

  • Gsm (Short-term memory)

  • Gs (Cognitive speed)

Sensory-perceptual abilities (CHC model)

• Senses and sensory input, declines with age

• Examples:

  • Gv (Visual processing)

  • Ga (Audio processing)

Expertise abilities (CHC model)

• Mainly education/practice, maintains or grows in aging

• Examples:

  • Gc (Crystallized Intelligence)

  • Glr (Long-term memory, retrieval)

  • Gq (Quantitative knowledge)

Practical intelligence (using tacit/implied knowledge)

• Ability to solve poorly-defined problems that can have multiple correct solutions

  • Using knowledge that is hard to teach (more “know-how”)

• Problems are usually personally interesting, relevant

• Tend to remain/improve with aging

Emotional intelligence

• Ability to understand, regulate, perceive, and use one’s emotions to enhance performance

• Tends to improve with aging

Creative intelligence

• Includes creative potential (thinking outside the box) and creative accomplishment (generating creative art)

• Potential tends to be stable/improve with aging

• Accomplishment varies by discipline

Swan-long phenomenon

A resurgence in creative works (creative accomplishment) towards the end of life following a post-peak decline

• Often exhibit “old-age style”

Old-age style

• A tendency for creators/artists to shift their style to simpler, briefer, and broader (although deeper) in their field as they age.

  • In visual art: Fewer fine details and more general “form”

  • In music: Shorter themes and simpler melodies

  • In science: Increased general application and synthesis (rather than detailed reviews)

Factors that influence age-related changes in cognition

• Stereotype Threat (people worrying their behavior will confirm stereotype about their group), lower

• Self-stereotyping (adopting age stereotypes and making it part of your identity)

Investment trait theory vs. engagement hypothesis

• Psychological predisposition (internal drive) to seek out intellectually stimulating activities is associated with higher cognitive function with aging

• A lifestyle of engaging with challenging mental activities frequently is associated with relatively high cognitive function with aging

Project ACTIVE

• Large-scale study to test if “brain training” can limit cognitive decline with aging

• Participants would randomly receive 60-75 minute training/practice trials in memory OR reasoning OR speed (vs. a control group)

  • If not control, could also receive booster (additional training) after 2 years

Project ACTIVE results

• Proximal (direct effects)

  • Memory training = improved memory & recall

  • Reasoning training = improved pattern recognition, problem solving

  • Speed training = improved processing speed (visual info)

• Primary (transfer to daily functioning)

  • All trainings led to improved IADLs (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living)

  • i.e. complex organizational skills more than just self-care, e.g. managing finances, shopping, using technology

• Secondary (Broader Effects)

  • All led to improved health-related QoL

  • Reasoning & speed training led to better/enhanced mobility

Cognitive Reserve (CR)

• Brain’s capacity to maintain cognitive functioning despite impairments (e.g. age-related structural and functional changes)

• Reflects the ability to use both standard and alternate, nonstandard brain networks when doing cognitive tasks (compensation)

Indices of Cognitive Reserve (CR)

Examples of factors that can be used to estimate CR level of older individuals

• IQ

• Lifestyle (intellectual engagement, cognitively challenging)

• Education

• Occupational history

• SES

Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults (HAROLD)

• Older adults exhibit less lateralization (one-sided brain usage) in PFC, more bi-lateral

• Used to compensate for age-related declines (compensation)

• Example of CR

Posterior-Anterior Shfit in Aging (PASA)

• Older adults exhibit more activity in the frontal (anterior) cortex rather than the back (posterior) cortex

  • Activity shifts from occipital lobe to frontal lobe

• Example of CR

Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition (STAC)

• Theory that states as humans age, we recruit additional brain regions and networks to compensate for deficits

Definitions of Personality

• Internal, dynamic, psychosocial systems that create a person’s patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings (Carver & Scheier, 2017)

• Patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and the psychological mechanisms behind them (Funder, 2024)

• Enduring psychological traits and mechanisms that influence interactions with physical, social, and intrapsychic environments (Larsen et al., 2023)

Five-Factor Model of Personality (OCEAN)

• Most widely accepted scientific “personality model”

• Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism

  • O - curiousness, creativity, artistic

  • C - efficient, organized, thorough

  • E - energetic, sociable

  • A - forgiving, sympathetic

  • N - anxious, insecure

Correlates of Five-Factor Personality Model

• O, E - more positive life events

• C - Greater physical health and lifespan

• A - lower depression

• N - lower physical health and lifespan

Mean-level change vs. rank-order consistency (personality traits)

• Mean-level change: Change in a person’s mean Five-Factor score over time

  • Maturity principle: Mean-level change as we age becomes more C & A, less N

  • Extraversion becomes more dominant (assertive) instead of vitality (warmness)

• Rank-order consistency: How consistent a person’s ranking of score for a Big Five test is (for each category) as they age

  • Increasing rank-order consistency as we age