PY 212 Final Exam Study Guide

Physical development (45-65)

Poorer vision, hearing, and muscle tone; diabetes, high cholesterol, cancer, arthritis

Heart disease

Slowly develops over time but becomes problematic in middle adulthood; most common cause is buildup of plaque in arteries; can lead to heart attack or stroke

Hypertension

High blood pressure

Climacteric

Decline in fertility

Perimenopause

Ovaries stop releasing eggs and decreased levels of estrogen and progesterone production

Menopause

12 months without menstruating; average age 51

Erectile dysfunction

Inability to consistently achieve an erection; 50% of males between 40-70 experience

Prostate

Becomes enlarged; can interfere with urinating; higher risk of developing cancer

Middle-aged brain

Some individuals have improved cognitive function compared to earlier; is calmer, less neurotic, more capable of managing emotions, and better able to negotiate social situations; less amygdala activation (part of the limbic system); more positive cognitive appraisal

Fluid intelligence

Learning new ways to solve problems and perform activities quickly and abstractly

Crystallized intelligence

Knowledge of the world, facts, increases with age

Memory

Worsens; processing speed decreases

Employment

Work satisfaction peaks, shifted expectations and goals from earlier years

Overtime

Not often covered, 39% worked 50+ hours, leads to burnout, no guaranteed vacation days

Social integration

How many social roles you have; helps decrease stress and provides social support

Caregiving

Marital strain, decreases physical and mental health, worse outcomes for female caregivers

Generativity

Procreativity, productivity, creativity

Generativity vs. Stagnation

Concern over positive legacy for oneself

Stagnation

Not active in generative matters

Sandwich generation

Adults with aging parents and providing support for a child

Kinkeeper

Keeps family connected; 86% are female

Empty nest

Role loss for parents

Boomerang kids

Young adults who return home after living independently

Divorce

2/3 of them are initiated by women; increased rates in older married couples (50+) due to unhappiness or financial reasons

Remote grandparents

Rarely see grandkids

Companionate grandparents

Did things with grandkids but had little authority

Involved grandparents

Very active role in grandkid’s life

Late adulthood

65+; baby boomers current majority of older adults; increasing percentage of the population

Life expectancy

Average number of years that a member of a population lives; 79 years in the U.S.; COVID-19 dropped by 1.8 years

Lifespan

Greatest age reached by any member of a population

Racial differences and life expectancy

Access to healthcare, socioeconomic status, vocation, substance use, exposure to violence, co-occuring conditions

Exposure to violence

Eliminating gun violence deaths would increase black male life expectancy by 0.54 years

Substance use

Eliminating overdose deaths would increase white male life expectancy by 0.24 years

Genetics

Better stability

Immunity

Males more likely to contract infections and theirs decreases more drastically with age

Estrogen

May be a protective factor for heart and circulating problems

Male behaviors

Less likely to such treatment or have a relationship with a doctor; experience more loneliness

Physical changes

Lung capacity diminishes, kidneys become less efficient, lose lean muscle, skin becomes thinner and less elastic, height and weight loss, chronic pain, vision changes (cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma)

Cancer

65+, 60% of new diagnoses and 70% of all cancer deaths

Heart disease

25% of deaths for people 65+

Arthritis

Most common cause of disability in U.S. adults, 62% of 65+

Osteoporosis

Weakening of bones, increased risk in females

Shingles

Chickenpox virus (typically from childhood) reemerges, vaccine acts as a booster

Brain functioning

Neurogenesis still occurs, even during neurodegeneration

Scaffolding theory

Brain adapts to neural atrophy by building alternative connections; retain high levels of performance, compensation

Cognitive reserve

Structural and dynamic capacities that buffer against atrophy

Physical activity and stimulating cognitive activity

Decreases risk of neurocognitive disorders

Phonological loop

Maintains information about auditory stimuli

Visuospatial sketchpad

Maintains information about visual stimuli

Central executive

Oversees working memory, allocating resources, monitoring what cognitive strategies are effective; most effected by aging

Tasks

Older adults are worse at learning two simultaneously; they perform equal to young adults when asked to learn each individually; phonological loops performed on par with younger adults

Semantic memory

Knowledge of facts

Implicit memory

Procedural skills, conditioning and priming

Episodic memory

Events

Prospective memory

Remembering things we need to do in the future

Recognition

Older people’s is equal to younger adults

Recall

Memory of older people deficits compared to younger adults

Processing speed theory

Nervous system slows with age, ability to process information declines

Working memory

Less efficient, longer time to make decisions or complete mental tasks

Inhibition theory

Older adults have difficulty with inhibitory functioning, ability to focus on certain information while suppressing attention to less important tasks

Alzheimer’s Disease

6th leading cause of death in U.S.; gradual onset with personality change and memory less; caused by misfolded proteins that cause neurons to lose communication and die

Beta-amyloid

Builds up into plaques, block cell communication, trigger inflammatory response

Tau

Becomes tangles and disrupts transport system

Retirement

18.5% 65+ continue to work; need to find things to fill time

Average amount of time collecting SSI

17-18 years; SSI could run out of money in a decade

Positive retirement pastimes

Volunteering, hobbies, social actitivies

Negative retirement pastimes

TV, isolation

Ageism

Prejudice based on age; can impact employment, social interactions, healthcare, connections to ableism, intersectionality

Aging

Associated with declining health and cognitive ability

Integrity vs. Despair

Retrospectively accounting one’s life, well-lived or full of regret; acceptance of life and inevitability of death; meaning, accomplishments, contentment

Active Theory

Greater satisfaction with life for those who remain active; more positive views on aging; better health; more socially connected

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Changes in motivation for actively seeking social contact; goals change based on how much time one has left to live; increased emphasis on emotional aspects of relationships

Prioritization of time

Married couples in older age increase positive interactions and decrease negative ones; more affectionate during conflict; smaller network compared to young adults

Loneliness

Discrepancy between social contact a person has and contacts a person wants; self-worth, impatience, desperation, and depression; 40% increased risk for dementia; 30% increased risk of stroke or coronary heart disease; increase in stress, depression and anxiety, less health behaviors

Widowhood

1 in 2 women aged 65+ are widowed; 1 in 10 men; loneliness is biggest challenge; if spouse was ill, “mixed blessing” when they pass

Widowhood mortality effect

Higher risk of death after death of a spouse; rate of mortality lower if they had time to prepare

Successful aging theory

Avoiding disease and disability, engagement with life, high cognitive and physical functioning

Telomeres

Meaningless repeats of DNA that are skipped when a cell divides; become shorter with each division; when completely gone, cell no longer divides; inherited from parents

Replication limit

Helps prevent cancer (uncontrollable cell growth)

Cellular senescence

Cell stops replicating, 50x is the limit in humans; limit reached, cell loses function and dies, causing age-related characteristics

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory helps illustrate the effects of ___ on development

Environment

What was part of John Locke’s philosophy on child development?

tabula rasa

In the Bobo Doll experiment, when the child saw the adult be aggressive with the doll, how was the child more likely to act towards the doll?

aggressive

What is a phenotype?

How the genes are expressed and what characteristics the organism has because of them

T/F: Fetuses experience sensory input

True

What is a genotype?

All the genetic material/information an organism has

What is the purpose of the placenta?

To deliver oxygen and nutrients to the fetus

The neural tube eventually develops into what?

The brain

Piaget believed children played a ___ role in their development

Active

What does tabula rasa mean?

blank slate

What does the stability vs. change debate ask?

Is personality stable from childhood or does it evolve as we age?

What is the outer layer of cells of a blastocyst called?

Trophoblast

What does Freud’s psychodynamics theory argue that behavior is influenced by?

Unresolved conflict and unconscious processes

Once sperm enters the vagina, how does it get to the egg/oocyte?

Fallopian tubes

What is pre-eclampsia associated with?

Hypertension

According to behaviorist theory, punishment ___ a behavior, and reinforcement ___ a behavior

decreases; increases

The embryonic disc inside the blastocyst eventually becomes what?

The embryo

When does an oocyte become a zygote?

Once sperm fertilizes it

What is an example of a behavior that Freud would theorize is from unresolved conflict or trauma during the oral fixation stage of development?

Vaping

Does development stop in adulthood?

No