Adulthood And Aging Exam 2

Identity Achievement (Marcia)

Status characterized by high exploration and high commitment, wherein an individual thoroughly explores alternatives and resolves upon a firm direction.

Moratorium (Marcia)

Status characterized by high exploration and low commitment, wherein an individual is actively examining options without reaching a final decision.

Foreclosure (Marcia)

Status characterized by low exploration and high commitment, wherein an individual adopts beliefs or paths without personal exploration.

Identity Diffusion (Marcia)

Status characterized by low exploration and low commitment, wherein an individual neither investigates choices nor settles on personal commitments.

Lifespan Trajectory of Identity Formation

Identity is dynamic, developmental, and ongoing across the entire lifespan rather than being established once in emerging adulthood.

Commitment Formation (Luyckx)

A process of broad exploration across various alternatives followed by seriously considering and choosing one option.

Commitment Evaluation (Luyckx)

Exploring a chosen direction in depth to assess whether it remains a suitable and satisfying choice.

Reconsideration of Identity (Luyckx)

Deliberately reflecting on whether an established personal commitment remains a good fit or requires revision.

Identification with Commitment (Luyckx)

The degree to which a chosen path or value becomes integrated as a fundamental part of the self.

Ruminative Exploration

Brooding continuously over alternatives due to feelings of being overwhelmed by choices or lacking direction.

Psychological Consequences of Ruminative Exploration

Elevated vulnerability to depression and anxiety accompanied by lowered self-esteem.

Growth Stage (Super)

Career development period lasting up to approximately age 14, focused on developing foundational ideas about personal aptitudes and interests.

Exploratory Stage (Super)

Career development phase spanning emerging adulthood to roughly age 24, focused on narrowing occupational options through schooling and entry-level work.

Establishment Stage (Super)

Career phase spanning roughly ages 25 to 44, centered on testing occupations, aligning skills to workplaces, and achieving occupational stability.

Maintenance Stage (Super)

Career stage focused on making internal adjustments and refinements to improve work satisfaction, performance, and advancement.

Decline / Disengagement Stage (Super)

Career phase beginning around age 65, wherein occupational work decelerates and retirement planning takes precedence.

Holland's Six Modal Orientations (RIASEC)

Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional.

Career Adaptability

An individual's readiness and cognitive resources for managing occupational decisions and navigating vocational transitions.

Career Concern

The dimension of vocational adaptability involving actively planning, anticipating, and preparing for future occupational events.

Career Control

The dimension of vocational adaptability defined by self-direction, personal discipline, and taking ownership of decision-making.

Career Curiosity

The dimension of vocational adaptability involving exploring personal possibilities and seeking information regarding jobs and paths.

Career Confidence

The dimension of vocational adaptability reflecting belief in one's capability to overcome barriers and achieve vocational aims.

Six Fundamental Tasks of Parenting

Ensuring safety/sustenance, providing stimulation/instruction, offering emotional support, monitoring, establishing structure, and facilitating social connectedness.

Secure Base (Attachment Theory)

A responsive caregiver presence that provides a reliable foundation from which children explore and to which they return for safety and comfort.

Three Basic Psychological Needs (Self-Determination Theory)

Autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Practices for Supporting Autonomy in Parenting

Taking the child's perspective, encouraging self-initiated action, structuring the surrounding environment, and offering appropriate choices.

Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky)

The space between what a learner can achieve independently and what can be mastered with scaffolded guidance from a skilled other.

Common Parenting Errors (Behavioral Theory)

Reinforcing undesired behavior, failing to reinforce desired behavior, and over-relying on punitive measures.

Parental Self-Efficacy

Caregivers' confidence in their ability to guide their children successfully, which predicts higher-quality caregiving and positive youth adjustment.

Family Systems Theory

A framework viewing the household as an interdependent emotional unit where shifts in one individual trigger reciprocal adjustments in others.

Co-Parenting

The coordination, communication, mutual support, and shared child-rearing involvement exhibited between caregiving partners.

Transactional Model of Development

A theoretical approach asserting that individuals both influence and are reciprocally influenced by their surrounding environment across time.

Generativity (Erikson)

A developmental commitment to guiding, nurturing, and investing in the welfare of upcoming generations.

Stagnation (Erikson)

A psychological state marked by self-centered absorption, personal indulgence, and failure to contribute beyond oneself.

Maintenance of the World

Nurturing and rearing upcoming generations while sustaining social institutions and stewarding ecological resources.

Biological Generativity (Kotre)

The physiological domain of generativity consisting of conceiving, giving birth, and physically nursing offspring.

Parental Generativity (Kotre)

Nurturing roles centered on providing food, shelter, discipline, affection, and passing along domestic traditions to children.

Technical Generativity (Kotre)

The deliberate teaching and transmitting of vocational skills, craft, and functional competence to junior individuals.

Cultural Generativity (Kotre)

The preservation, creation, and transmission of broader cultural meaning, artistic expressions, systems, and artifacts.

Intergenerational Buffers

Proactive protective efforts by parents or grandparents designed to halt the transmission of family trauma or adverse patterns.

Six Generative Tasks of Grandparents

Storytelling, mentoring/instruction, offering warmth/affection, providing leisure/play, maintaining emergency attachment, and contributing financial or time resources.

Intergenerational Programs

Structured community initiatives uniting older and younger persons for mutual support, shared learning, and collective engagement.

Demonstrated Benefits of Intergenerational Programs

Decreased ageist stereotyping, strengthened generational solidarity, elevated self-esteem, and alleviated isolation among older adults.

Modernization Hypothesis (Aging)

The view that ageism rises because rapid technological and social developments devalue the historical knowledge held by older generations.

Andoque Knowledge Transmission

An ethnographic example highlighting how tribal elders teach vital environmental survival competencies such as gardening, fishing, tracking, and habitat awareness.

Adult Development

The multidisciplinary study of biological, psychological, and social changes extending from late adolescence into advanced old age.

Gerontology

The scientific, interdisciplinary field investigating biological, psychological, and social dimensions of aging.

Geriatrics

The specialized branch of medicine dedicated to the clinical diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of illnesses in elderly populations.

Biopsychosocial Perspective on Aging

The paradigm asserting that older adult trajectories arise from intricate, ongoing interactions across biological, psychological, and sociocultural domains.

Continuity Principle

The principle that developmental changes are ongoing and cumulative, enabling people to preserve a consistent sense of self over time.

Survivor Principle

The recognition that individuals reaching advanced age represent an uncharacteristically robust cohort that avoided earlier mortality risks.

Individuality Principle

The developmental axiom stating that interpersonal variance in health, cognition, and lifestyle expands rather than shrinks with advancing age.

Distinction Between Normal Aging and Disease

Typical, age-associated biological shifts are normative and non-pathological, differing fundamentally from acute or chronic clinical diseases.

Successful Aging (Rowe & Kahn)

A multidimensional model combining the avoidance of disease and disability, high physical and cognitive function, and active life engagement.

Optimal Aging

Achieving personal fulfillment and subjective well-being despite physiological limitations, emphasizing adaptive coping and life satisfaction.

Primary Aging

Universal, genetically programmed physiological declines that occur over time regardless of health status, including reduced vital capacity and arterial elasticity.

Secondary Aging

Age-correlated impairments caused by environmental insults, unhealthy behaviors, or chronic pathologies such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Tertiary Aging

A marked, accelerated systemic breakdown in physical and cognitive capacity occurring during the terminal period shortly preceding death.

Young-Old

Demographic classification designating older individuals between the ages of 65 and 74.

Old-Old

Demographic classification designating older adults between the ages of 75 and 84.

Oldest-Old

Demographic classification referring to individuals who have reached age 85 and older.

Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner)

A framework stating that development is mediated by nested, interacting environmental layers and reciprocal person-environment dynamics.

Microsystem

The innermost environmental system encompassing the immediate physical settings and face-to-face social interactions experienced directly.

Mesosystem

The layer formed by connections and bidirectional interactions between two or more immediate microsystems (e.g., family and workplace).

Exosystem

Environmental contexts that do not contain the individual directly but still exert influence over their immediate experiences.

Macrosystem

The overarching cultural, economic, political, and philosophical fabric organizing societal practices and expectations.

Chronosystem

The socio-historical and developmental time dimension across which life transitions and environmental events occur.

Bjornsdottir et al. (2019)

Study evaluating Icelandic retirement community residents through an ecological framework to identify physical activity barriers and facilitators.

Competence-Environmental Press Model

A theoretical model explaining adaptive behavior as an interaction between an individual's functional competencies and ambient environmental demands.

Environmental Press

The cumulative physical, interpersonal, and task-based demands that a given setting places upon a person.

Zone of Maximum Comfort

The level of press where demands fall slightly below peak ability, enabling effortless functioning and positive emotional affect.

Zone of Maximum Performance Potential

The level of press where environmental demands stretch personal competencies constructively, fostering growth and optimal function.

Marginally Adaptive / Tolerable Zone

An environmental region where situational demands begin exceeding personal capacity, creating emergent strain and minor difficulties.

Maladaptive Environment

A setting whose demands severely overpower personal capacities, resulting in distress, negative affect, and behavioral breakdown.

Bathing Disability

A functional deficit defined by the inability to wash and dry one's entire body without hands-on assistance from another person.

Whitehead & Golding (2018)

Investigation of adults aged 65+ receiving walk-in shower modifications, highlighting themes of safety, independence, control, and boosted dignity.

Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC)

A lifespan meta-model for maximizing growth while mitigating losses through focusing goals, honing skills, and applying alternative tactics.

Selection (SOC)

The strategic narrowing and prioritization of particular developmental goals, tasks, or domains of functioning.

Elective Selection

The voluntary adoption of new goals or activities motivated by personal desire, curiosity, or new interests.

Loss-Based Selection

The responsive restructuring of priorities forced by declines in biological, personal, or socio-economic resources.

Optimization (SOC)

The targeted allocation of practice, education, and energy to enhance efficiency and performance in chosen life areas.

Compensation (SOC)

Employing technological aids, behavioral adaptations, or external help when primary means of functioning become compromised.

Pianist Arthur Rubinstein's Approach (SOC Illustration)

Playing fewer musical pieces, rehearsing those pieces more frequently, and slowing down before fast passages to exaggerate perceived tempo.

Identity Schema (Whitbourne)

An internal cognitive framework consisting of views regarding one's physical body, cognitive skills, social roles, and cultural background.

Identity Assimilation

Interpreting new experiences through preexisting self-views without modifying the core self-concept.

Identity Accommodation

Modifying existing self-schemas when confronted with undeniable experiences or feedback that dispute previous self-perceptions.

Identity Balance

An optimal equilibrium marked by maintaining a stable sense of self while flexibly adapting when evidence demands realistic change.

Possible Selves

Personalized mental representations of potential future states that function as cognitive incentives and guides for action.

Hoped-For Selves

Anticipated future identities reflecting desired accomplishments, growth, or functional preservation.

Feared Selves

Anticipated future identities representing dreaded circumstances, incapacities, or negative fates that one actively avoids.

Smith & Freund (2002)

Study demonstrating that adults aged 70 to 100+ continue generating vivid positive aspirations and avoidance images that motivate daily choices.

Pontinen et al. (2019)

Research on older adults moving into independent housing showing that positive future selves involved active hobbies, while negative ones centered on infirmity.

Integrity vs. Despair (Erikson)

The culminating psychosocial crisis wherein an older adult reflects on the overall arc of life and grapples with mortality.

Ego Integrity

The developmental achievement of self-acceptance, sense of purpose, psychological peace, and absence of overwhelming regret.

Despair (Erikson)

The developmental failure marked by pervasive bitterness, regret, self-reproach, and painful convictions that past errors cannot be righted.

Integrated Status (Ego Integrity)

A healthy late-life orientation featuring realistic awareness, peace regarding past failures, constructive social connections, and ongoing curiosity.

Nonexploratory Status (Ego Integrity)

A late-life posture grounded in unexamined confidence in past domestic or vocational successes, paired with general optimism without introspection.

Pseudointegrated Status (Ego Integrity)

A forced façade of coherence and satisfaction maintained through defensiveness or a refusal to confront past conflicts.

Despairing Status (Ego Integrity)

A state dominated by depressive affect, preoccupation with lost opportunities, and persistent sorrow regarding how life unfolded.

Interventions to Foster Ego Integrity

Nurturing deep social ties, cognitively reframing past hardships into lessons, remaining intellectually open, and cultivating deliberate gratitude.