Adult Development and Aging: Cognitive, Social, and Environmental Dimensions

Comprehensive practice flashcards covering Social Cognition, Intelligence and Wisdom, Attention and Memory, and Person-Environment Interactions across adulthood.

Social Cognition

The study of how people make sense of themselves, others, and daily life events within social situations.

Stereotypes

A special kind of social knowledge structure or social belief about the characteristics and behaviors of a particular social group.

Age-Based Double Standard

Judging an older person's forgetfulness or mistakes more harshly than the same behaviors in a young adult.

Implicit Stereotypes

Automatically activated unconscious negative stereotypes about aging that guide our behavior.

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

A research assessment tool that found all individuals possess implicit age attitudes that strongly favor the young over the old.

Imagined Intergroup Contact Strategy

A social strategy shown to significantly reduce age bias, demonstrating that stereotypes can be changed.

Stereotype Threat

The fear or worry that your performance will confirm a negative reputation about your social group.

Cohort Effects in Social Beliefs

Differences in social beliefs between age groups that stem from how different generations were socialized with respect to important social rules.

Self-Perception of Aging

An individual's perception of their own age and aging, influenced by the social stereotypes held about aging.

Labeling Theory

A concept suggesting that when older individuals encounter negative ideas about aging, they are likely to adopt those views into their own self-image.

Resilience Theory

A concept suggesting that when people face negative assumptions about aging, they reject those views to protect their self-worth.

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

People's ability to recognize their own and others' emotions, correctly identify and tell the difference between emotions, and use this information to guide thinking and behavior.

Trait Emotional Intelligence

A view of emotional intelligence reflecting a person's self-perceived dispositions and abilities.

Ability Emotional Intelligence

A view of emotional intelligence reflecting a person's success at processing emotional information and using it appropriately in social contexts.

Impression Formation

The cognitive process involved in the way people form and revise first impressions of others.

Negativity Bias (Impression Formation)

The tendency of older adults to let initial impressions stand because negative information was more striking to them and affected them more strongly.

Diagnosticity of Information

The degree of diagnostic value or informational relevance available, to which older adults are especially sensitive when forming impressions.

Social Knowledge

Previous experiences stored in memory that individuals draw upon when faced with new situations.

Availability of Social Knowledge

The requirement that an individual must have had prior experience with a particular subject for it to be present in memory to guide future behavior.

Accessibility of Social Knowledge

The ease with which stored social information can be retrieved to guide behavior, depending on the strength of the information in memory.

Source Judgments

Cognitive processes in which an individual tries to determine the specific source of a particular piece of information.

Prefrontal Cortex and False Information

The brain region where damage or age-related changes are linked to older adults' increased difficulty ignoring false information.

Processing Capacity Explanation (Gilbert and Malone)

The explanation establishing that the ability to make unbiased social judgments depends directly on the cognitive demands accompanying those judgments.

Causal Attributions

Explanations constructed by individuals regarding why particular behaviors occur.

Dispositional Attribution

A causal attribution that concludes the cause of a behavior resides within the actor.

Situational Attribution

A causal attribution that concludes the cause of a behavior resides outside the actor.

Correspondence Bias

The tendency of young adults to draw inferences about older people's dispositions from behavior that can be fully explained through situational factors.

Interactive Attributions

Causal attributions combining both dispositional and situational factors, made by both older and younger adults when confronted with ambiguous situations.

Dispositional Bias in Negative Relationships

The tendency for older adults confronting negative relationship situations to blame the primary character more for causing the negative outcome based on their own beliefs.

Cross-Cultural Attribution Differences

Research finding that younger and older Chinese adults display less correspondence bias than American adults due to collectivistic cultural influences.

Personal Goals

Underlying motivations and actions that play a major role in creating life direction, perception of the environment, and behavior, which evolve to match changing needs.

Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC)

A model stating that development occurs as individuals continuously update personal goals to match their appraisal of available resources, interests, strengths, and limitations.

Autonomy Retention Goal

The primary motivational goal of older adults focused on maintaining abilities at their current level in prioritized domains to preserve independence.

Positivity Effect

The tendency for older adults to avoid negative information and focus more on positive information when making decisions, judgments, and remembering events.

Executive Control and Emotional Arousal

The finding that highly arousing situations demanding extensive executive control can lead older adults to perform more poorly at processing and remembering information.

Strength and Vulnerability Integration (SAVI) Model

A model stating that increasing age makes regulating high levels of emotional arousal harder, imposing a higher cognitive price that pushes older adults to focus on the positive.

Cognitive Style

How individuals approach solving problems, including characteristics like the need for closure or having little tolerance for ambiguity.

Need for Closure

A cognitive style dimension prompting older adults to seek quick and decisive answers to conserve personal cognitive resources, predicting social judgment biases.

Personal Control

The degree to which an individual believes that performance in a situation depends on something they personally do.

Multidimensionality of Personal Control

The principle that age differences in personal control depend directly on the specific domain being studied.

Assimilative Activities (Brandtstädter)

Direct coping actions taken to prevent losses in important life areas, such as using calendars or memory aids to stay organized.

Accommodations (Brandtstädter)

Adjusting personal goals and lowering expectations so that difficulties or age-related changes do not hurt self-esteem.

Immunizing Mechanisms (Brandtstädter)

Unconscious defenses that protect self-image by making excuses or denying signs of physical or mental decline.

Primary Control (Heckhausen, Wrosch, and Schulz)

Control efforts aimed at modifying the outside world to fit personal desires and goals, which typically decline in older age.

Secondary Control (Heckhausen, Wrosch, and Schulz)

Control efforts focused on changing personal attitudes and expectations to fit an unchangeable environment, which increase in older age.

Collectivist Critique of Primary Control

Cross-cultural perspectives arguing that collectivist societies emphasize interdependence, social connection, and binding to institutions rather than individualistic primary control.

Collaborative Cognition

Occurs when two or more people work together to solve a cognitive task, helping facilitate memory and problem-solving in older adults.

Adaptive Recalling Pattern in Couples

An expertise developed by well-acquainted older couples that combines social support issues and strategic efforts to optimize collaborative memory recall.

Social Context of Memory

The everyday interpersonal setting that can serve a facilitative function for memory performance in older adults.

MIDMAC

The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development, established in $1989$ to study biomedical, psychological, and social factors in midlife.

Everyday Intelligence

The common conceptualization agreed upon by experts and laypeople that intelligence consists of problem-solving ability, verbal ability, and social competence.

Indicators of Intelligent Behaviors

Key behaviors identified as important indicators of intelligence for all individuals: motivation, intellectual effort, and reading.

Multidimensionality of Intelligence

A life-span perspective concept referring to the many distinct abilities that underlie intellectual functioning.

Multidirectionality of Intelligence

A life-span perspective concept referring to the distinct patterns of growth, stability, and decline exhibited across different intellectual abilities across adulthood.

Plasticity (Intelligence)

The life-span concept referring to the range within which an individual's intellectual abilities can be modified or improved.

Interindividual Variability

The life-span concept acknowledging that individuals differ from one another in their intellectual development trajectories.

Dual-Component Model of Intellectual Functioning

Baltes and colleagues' model proposing that intellectual functioning consists of biological mechanics of intelligence and cultural pragmatics of intelligence.

Mechanics of Intelligence

The basic neurobiological hardware of the mind, such as processing speed and spatial orientation, which naturally slows down over time.

Pragmatic Intelligence

The practical software of the mind, including vocabulary, everyday problem-solving, and accumulated wisdom, which typically remains steady or grows.

Psychometric Approach to Intelligence

An approach focusing on standardized test performance with an emphasis on correct answers and the interrelationships among intellectual abilities.

Cognitive-Structural Approach to Intelligence

An approach concerned with how individuals conceptualize and solve problems, emphasizing developmental changes in styles and modes of thinking rather than test scores.

Structure of Intelligence

The organization of interrelated intellectual abilities, commonly represented as a five-level hierarchy.

Five-Level Hierarchy of Intelligence

A framework organizing intelligence from individual test questions (Level 1) to tests (Level 2), primary mental abilities (Level 3), secondary mental abilities (Level 4), and general intelligence (Level 5).

Factor (Psychometrics)

A construct representing interrelated intellectual abilities identified when performance on one test is highly related to performance on another test.

Primary Mental Abilities

Hypothetical constructs organizing intellectual abilities into groups of related skills, with roughly $25$ identified.

Secondary Mental Abilities

Broader intellectual abilities representing related groups of primary mental abilities, which are not measured directly.

Number (Primary Ability)

The primary mental ability reflecting basic skills that underlie an individual's mathematical reasoning.

Word Fluency (Primary Ability)

The primary mental ability reflecting how easily an individual can produce verbal descriptions of things.

Verbal Meaning (Primary Ability)

The primary mental ability reflecting an individual's vocabulary ability.

Inductive Reasoning (Primary Ability)

The primary mental ability reflecting one's capacity to extrapolate from particular facts to general concepts.

Spatial Orientation (Primary Ability)

The primary mental ability reflecting one's capacity to reason in the three-dimensional world in which we live.

Fluid Intelligence

The ability to think flexibly, spot patterns, and solve unfamiliar problems without relying on prior education or life experience.

Crystallized Intelligence

The broad store of knowledge, facts, and vocabulary gained through education, culture, and life experience over time.

P-FIT Model

A brain theory explaining individual differences in mental ability based on how well the parietal and frontal networks share information.

Neural Efficiency Hypothesis

The hypothesis proposing that intelligent people process information more efficiently than less intelligent people.

Cohort Differences in Intelligence

Generational differences showing cross-sectional declines but longitudinal stability or growth, largely explained by shifts in educational attainment across generations.

Terminal Decline

The gradual decline in cognitive function that occurs relatively near death.

Project ACTIVE

An intervention study showing that ability-specific cognitive training improves primary abilities in older adults, maintains gains, and transfers to new situations.

Adaptation (Piaget)

The fundamental process of adjusting one's thinking to the environment through activity.

Organization (Piaget)

The principle that thought is organized into a coordinated whole, reflected in cognitive structures that change across the lifespan.

Assimilation (Piaget)

Using currently available knowledge to make sense of incoming information (e.g., using the word 'dog' for all four-legged animals).

Accommodation (Piaget)

Changing one's thought to make it a better approximation of the world of experience (e.g., differentiating between 'dogs' and 'cats').

Sensorimotor Period

Piaget's first stage of cognitive development where babies and infants gain knowledge strictly by using sensory and motor skills.

Preoperational Period

Piaget's second stage where young children's thinking is not logical and is characterized by egocentrism.

Concrete Operational Period

Piaget's third stage where logical reasoning emerges, though children remain unable to deal with abstract concepts.

Formal Operational Period

Piaget's fourth stage, acquired during adolescence, characterized by hypothetico-deductive thought, abstract concepts, and single correct solutions.

Postformal Thought

A mature level of adult thinking that recognizes the right answer depends on the context, contradictions are normal, and emotions shape logic.

Reflective Judgment

A developmental model developed by Kitchener and King describing how people reason through dilemmas involving current affairs, religion, and science across seven stages.

Pre-Reflective Thought

Stages $1$ to $3$ of reflective judgment where individuals do not acknowledge that knowledge is uncertain or that real dilemmas exist.

Quasi-Reflective Thought

Stages $4$ and $5$ of reflective judgment where people recognize uncertainty but struggle to draw definitive reasoned conclusions.

True Reflective Judgment

Stages $6$ and $7$ of reflective judgment where individuals evaluate beliefs and evidence across perspectives to reach reasoned solutions.

Optimal Level of Development

The highest level of information-processing capacity of which a person is capable under supportive conditions.

Skill Acquisition (Kitchener and King)

The gradual and somewhat haphazard developmental process by which people learn new cognitive abilities.

Anterior Insula and Prefrontal Cortex

Brain regions identified by neuroimaging as the neural substrate where the integration of emotion and logic occurs.

Everyday Decision Making in Older Adults

The cognitive pattern where older adults search for less information and rely on easily accessible cues, occasionally predisposing them to financial exploitation.

Unexercised Ability (Denney)

The cognitive ability a normal, healthy adult would exhibit without practice or training (e.g., fluid intelligence).

Optimally Exercised Ability (Denney)

The cognitive ability a normal, healthy adult would demonstrate under the best conditions of training and practice (e.g., crystallized intelligence).

Observed Tasks of Daily Living (OTDL)

A practical problem-solving instrument measuring food preparation, medication intake, and telephone use to determine if older adults can live independently.

Expertise

Superior problem-solving based on well-established knowledge structures that peak by middle age, often bypassing novice-level procedural rules.

Lifelong Learning

The best approach to keeping cognitively active across adulthood, accommodating changing learning styles through education following college.