Constructing an Adult Life, Aging, and End-of-Life Development

Vocabulary flashcards covering key developmental psychology concepts from Chapters 10 through 15, including emerging adulthood, relationships, midlife, aging, cognitive shifts, and end-of-life care.

Emerging adulthood

The developmental stage beginning after high school and tapering off toward the late twenties, devoted to constructing an adult life.

Identity vs. role confusion

Erikson's primary task for adolescence and emerging adulthood where young people search for a coherent identity versus experiencing confusion over their life role.

Identity Diffusion

Marcia's identity status characterized by lacking a sense of direction or commitment.

Identity Foreclosure

Marcia's identity status characterized by committing to an identity without prior exploration, often based on parental expectations.

Moratorium

Marcia's identity status characterized by active exploration of different identities without immediate commitment.

Identity Achievement

Marcia's identity status characterized by establishing a clear, self-chosen identity after a period of exploration.

Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept describing the feeling of total absorption in a challenging, goal-oriented activity that relies on an optimal fit between a person's skills and environmental challenges.

Homogamy

Similarity in interests and values that forms the basis of relationships most likely to last.

Secure adult attachment

An adult attachment style characterized by being empathetic, sensitive, capable of genuine intimacy, and able to balance personal needs with those of a partner.

Avoidant/Dismissive attachment

An insecure adult attachment style characterized by being aloof, uncaring, emotionally distant, and prone to abruptly disengaging at signs of commitment.

Preoccupied/Ambivalent attachment

An insecure adult attachment style characterized by being needy, suffocating, excessively jealous, and requiring constant reassurance of love.

Deinstitutionalization of marriage

The decline of traditional marriage as an indispensable social institution due to shifting focus toward personal choices and women's independence.

Triangular Theory of Love

Sternberg's theory that love is constructed from three components: Passion (sexual arousal), Intimacy (closeness), and Commitment (exclusivity/marriage).

Consummate Love

A type of love in Sternberg's Triangular Theory combining all three components: Passion, Intimacy, and Commitment.

Nurturer fathers

Fathers who juggle breadwinning with active parenting, though their caregiving remains skewed toward play.

Holland's personality work types

Six career personality types used to maximize career satisfaction: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Entrepreneurial, and Conventional.

Allostatic load

The physiological wear-and-tear on the body from chronic stress, where higher scores correlate with significant declines in executive functioning and cognitive performance.

Menopause

The biological milestone defined as missing menstruation for a full year due to erratic and ceasing ovulation caused by declining estrogen.

Crystallized Intelligence

Accumulated factual knowledge that increases through midlife and stays high until late life.

Fluid Intelligence

The ability to quickly reason through novel tasks that begins to decline early in adult life due to nervous system changes.

Selective optimization with compensation

A strategy for managing cognitive aging by selecting the most important tasks, optimizing performance on them, and compensating for lost abilities through external aids or alternate methods.

Big Five Personality Traits

A model of personality consisting of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness.

Generativity vs. stagnation

Erikson's seventh psychosocial stage where midlife adults seek fulfillment by guiding the next generation and making meaningful societal contributions, failing which results in stagnation and lack of purpose.

Wisdom

A cognitive and emotional quality defined by embracing uncertainty, displaying self-transcendence, demonstrating humility, and showing empathy/compassion.

Sandwich generation

Adults tasked with simultaneously caring for their own growing children and their aging, disabled parents.

Socioemotional selectivity theory

A theory proposing that as people sense their remaining time in life is limited, they reprioritize goals to focus on present emotional fulfillment, paring down social contacts to maintain close, positive relationships.

Integrity vs. despair

Erikson's final psychosocial stage where older adults look back on life to achieve integrity (feeling life had meaning and making peace with it) versus despair (feeling regret and fear of death).

Presbyopia

A normal visual impairment in aging caused by a stiffening lens.

Presbycusis

Age-related hearing impairment caused by inner-ear receptor loss, causing difficulty hearing high-pitched sounds and filtering background noise.

Neurocognitive disorder (NCD)

A progressive, irreversible cognitive erosion caused primarily by Alzheimer's disease and Vascular NCD.

Dying trajectory

The expected path and timeline of decline that hospital staff anticipate for a terminally ill patient.

Palliative care

Medical and supportive care designed not to cure an illness, but to maximize comfort and dignified quality of life.

Hospice care

A specialized palliative care movement that supports terminally ill patients and their families, typically in home settings, emphasizing death as a human event.

Living Will

An advance directive that outlines specific life-prolonging treatments desired or refused.

Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care

An advance directive that designates a surrogate decision-maker.

Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) Order

An advance directive that prohibits CPR or life-saving resuscitation.

Do Not Hospitalize (DNH) Order

An advance directive that specifies that an individual should not be transferred to a hospital for emergency treatment.

Passive Euthanasia

The practice of withholding life-prolonging interventions, such as disconnecting a ventilator.

Active Euthanasia

Directly taking action to end a patient's life at their request.

Physician-Assisted Death

A practice where a doctor prescribes lethal medication that the patient self-administers.

Age-based rationing of care

The ethical proposal that after a person has lived out a natural lifespan, high-cost, aggressive life-sustaining medical technologies should no longer be allocated to resist death.