Unit 4 Study Questions

What do cross-sectional studies typically show regarding changes in intelligence as we move from early to late adulthood?

- crystallized intelligence increases
- fluid intelligence decreases
- reasoning, memory, spatial visualization, and processing speed declines
- cognitive functioning involving accumulated knowledge increases until the 60s

What do longitudinal studies typically show regarding changes in intelligence as we move from early to late adulthood?

- middle age was a time for peak performance in intelligence
- most abilities of cognitive functioning declines in the 60s
- verbal ability declines in the 70s
- all cognitive abilities decline during the 70s and 90s

Why is there a difference and what do cohort effects have to do with it?

- cohort effects creates the differences across generations
- advances in cognitive functioning in middle age are due to educational attainment, occupational structures, changes in healthcare and lifestyles, immigration, and social interventions in poverty

Why do cross-sectional studies probably underestimate intelligence at older ages?

- the age of peak performance
- cohort effects

Why do longitudinal studies probably overestimate intelligence at older ages?

- practice effect
- attrition (people sometimes will drop out)

What are fluid and crystallized intelligence?

fluid intelligence - the ability to reason abstractly

crystallized intelligence - accumulated information and verbal skills

How do they each change throughout adulthood?

- fluid intelligence declines from middle adulthood on
- crystallized intelligence increases in middle age

What was affected by cohort effects, according to the Zelinski & Kennison research?

older adults may perform like much younger ones from the previous generation on fluid measures, indicating higher levels of abilities than expected

What are retrospective and prospective memory?

retrospective memory - memory of people, words, and events encountered or experienced in the past; includes all other types of memory including episodic, semantic and procedural

prospective memory - involves remembering to perform a planned action or intention at the appropriate time; tasks are highly prevalent in daily life and range from relatively simple tasks to extreme life-or-death situations

How did Sinnott test for these and how did older vs younger adults perform?

- individuals were asked to recognize or to recall experiences from a 3-day period
- age affects retrospective memory but not prospective memory

How did older vs younger adults differ when asked to remember facts about their testing after participating in research in Sinnott's lab?

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What might Sinnott's research say about memory in adulthood and how we typically test it when conducting research?

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What are normative-crisis and life events theories of personality development?

normative crisis theory - age related stages examine adult personality development

life events theory - an approach emphasizing that how a life event influences the individual's development depends not only on the life event but also on mediating factors, the individual's adaptation to the life event, the life-stage context and the sociohistorical context

Which category does Erikson's theory fit in (why?)?

- normative crisis theory
- a psychoanalytic theory in which eight stages of psychosocial development unfold throughout the human life span; each stage consists of a unique developmental task that confronts individuals with a crisis that must be faced

What is Erikson's 7th stage?

- generativity versus stagnation
- adults' desire to leave legacies of themselves to the next generation
- individuals sense that they have done little or nothing for the next generation

Why, according to Levinson, are most people susceptible to experiencing a "midlife crisis?"

- adults are suspended between the past and the future, trying to cope with this gap that threatens life's continuity
- males come to grip four major conflicts that have existed in life since adolescence:
1. being young versus being old
2. being destructive versus being constructive
3. being masculine versus being feminine
4. being attached to others versus being separated from them

If research has consistently shown that most people do not experience a crisis in midlife, why does the myth of a midlife crisis persist?

- midlife crises have been exaggerated
- the stage theories place too much emphasis on crises in development, especially midlife crises
- there is often considerable individual variation in the way people experience the stages

What are the criticisms of the life events approach to personality change in adulthood?

- life events approach places too much emphasis on change
- failure to recognize that our daily experiences may be the primary sources of stress in our lives

What is the evidence for stability in adult personality?

- big five factors of personality
- stability across the adult years occurs for the five personality factors (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism)
- openness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism are lower in early adulthood, peaked in middle adulthood, and decreased in late adulthood
- conscientiousness increases continuously from early adulthood to late adulthood

How has the proportion of older adults (65+) changed since 1900? (Know percentages.)

- 4% in 1900
- 13% today

What is it projected to be by 2050?

25%

What was the average life-expectancy at birth in 1900? 1950? Today?

- 46-48 years in 1990
- 65-71 years in 1950
- 79 years today

What are some differences between childhood and adulthood that make studying the adult population more difficult/complicated?

their deteriorating health

What is functional age?

ability of the individual to perform desired activities with ease and grace

What might be an evolutionary argument for the existence of "death genes," genes preprogrammed to cause cell death after reproductive years?

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What is the Hayflick limit (and what is it in humans)?

- cellular clock theory
- as we age, our cells become increasingly less capable of dividing
- the maximum number of times that human cells can divide is about 75 to 80

What are telomeres and what role do they play in the lifespan of a cell?

- DNA sequences that cap chromosomes
- become shorter and shorter every time a cell divides
- after 70 or 80 replications, the telomeres are dramatically reduced and the cell can no longer reproduce

What is telomerase? What kinds of cells tend to have an abundance of it?

- an enzyme that can substantially extend the life of the cells beyond the approximately 70 to 80 normal cell divisions
- present in approximately 85 to 90 percent of cancerous cells and thus may not produce healthy life extension of cells

What are free radicals and what do they have to do with aging?

- unstable oxygen molecules
- people age because normal cell metabolism produces free radicals
- free radicals ricochet around inside cells, damaging DNA and other cellular structures

What is the relationship between bodyweight and brain size in older adults according to the research I cited in class?

the heavier your weight is, the smaller your brain

What might be a possible causal mechanism that would explain this association?

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What were the results of the research I described by Erikson et al?

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Why did the young males in the group of young elephants relocated to another park behave so terribly?

- young male elephants remained in the state of musth for months versus the usual weeks
- a state where testosterone hormone levels rise exponentially

How did introducing older elephants into the group help the situation? (What did the older adults do and why did that stop the negative behaviors of the young males?)

- older male elephants would beat down young elephants if they picked a fight with them
- older male elephants helped to calm them down

Why did the elephant calves in herds with the oldest females have the highest survival rate during a severe drought?

older females knew more information about watering holes and protection from the droughts

Describe two ways in which our immune systems might begin to malfunction in response to shortening telomeres.

- poorer response to illness/toxics/foreign agents (viruses)
- poorer recognition of own cells (attacks own self)

What role might anti-oxidants play in slowing the aging process?

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How is stress related to aging?

- aging in the body's hormonal system can lower resilience under stress and increase the likelihood of disease
- as people age, the hormones stimulated by stress remain at elevated levels longer than when people were younger which are associated with increased risks of many diseases
- decline in immune system functioning with aging

What are stem cells?

an undifferentiated cell of a multicellular organism that is capable of giving rise to indefinitely more cells of the same type, and from which certain other kinds of cell arise by differentiation

What is it about stem cells that makes them a potential way to reverse aging? How are they already being used?

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