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113 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
The study of aging, from maturity to old age
Gerontology
the four key features of the life-span perspective
Multidirectionality – Development involves both growth and decline; as people grow in one area, they may lose in another and at different rates.
Plasticity – One's capacity is not predetermined or set in concrete. Skills can be trained or improved, even in late life, though there are limits
Historical Context – each of us develops within a particular set of circumstances determined by the historical time in which we are born and the culture in which we grew up.
Multiple causation – How people develop results from a wide variety of forces.
Understand individualism versus collectivism
Individualism – Older adults who are fiercely independent and view the challenges of aging as something face alone or with professional help.
Collectivism – View themselves as part of a larger unit, typically family, and see the same challenges as something one faces with other family members as a group.
Which country will lead the industrialized world in the rate of increase of old people?
Canada
the four forces of development
Biological forces – include all genetic and health related factors that affect development. Ex: Menopause, facial wrinkling, changes in major organ systems.
Psychological forces – all internal perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and personality factors that affect development. Collectively, psych. Forces provide characteristics we notice about people that make them individuals.
Sociocultural forces – interpersonal, societal, cultural, and ethnic factors that affect development. Provide the overall contexts in which we develop.
Life-cycle forces – reflect differences in how the same event or combination of biological, psychological, and sociocultural forces affects people at different points in their lives.
What is a cohort?
- a group of people born at the same point or specific time span in historical time.
Understand the three types of influences
Normative age-graded influences : experiences caused by biological, psychological, and sociocultural forces that occur to most people of a particular age. Ex: puberty, menarche, and menopause. Usually indicate major change in a person's life.
Normative history-graded influences – events that most people in a specific culture experience at the same time. For example, biological such as epidemics, psychological, such as stereotypes...etc.
Non-normative influences – random or rare events that may be important for a specific individual but are not experienced by most people. Winning lottery, or accident or layoff.
- How are culture and ethnicity defined and how do they influence us? - They jointly provide status, social settings, living conditions, and personal experiences. Culture can be shared basic value orientations, norms, beliefs, and customary ways of living. Ethnicity is an individual and collective sense of identity based on historical and cultural groups membership and related behaviors and beliefs.
What are primary aging, secondary aging, and tertiary aging?
Primary aging- normal, disease-free development during adulthood
Secondary aging – developmental changes that are related to disease, lifestyle, and other environmentally induced changes that are not inevitable, like pollution.
Tertiary aging – the rapid losses that occur shortly before desk. For example, a the terminal drop in which intellectual abilities show a marked decline in the last few years before death.
is a shorthand way to index time and organize events and data by using a commonly understood standard: calendar time.
Chronological age
refers to the age you think of yourself as.
Perceived age
assessed by measuring the functioning of the various vital, or life limiting organ systems, such as the cardiovascular system.
Biological Age
functional level of the psychological abilities people use to adapt to changing environmental demands. Include memory, intelligence, feelings, motivation, and other skills that maintain self esteem and personal control.
Psychological Age
specific set of roles individuals adapt in relation to other members of society and culture to which they belong. Style of dress, customs, language, and interpersonal style.
Sociocultural age
no features of lifespan development are due exclusively to either heredity or environment. Instead, development is always shaped by both.
What do we believe today about the nature-nurture issue?
the degree to which people remain the same over time.
stability-change issue
discontinuity controversy concerns whether a particular developmental phenomenon represents a smooth progression over time or a series of abrupt shifts.
continuity-discontinuity controversy
plasticity
Plasticity refers to the belief that capacity is not fixed, but can be learned or improved with practice. For example, learning ways to remember information.
concerns whether there is just one path of development or several.
Understand the universal vs. context-specific development controversy
the three approaches that gerontologists use to get data about people’s behaviors.-
.- observing systematically, using tasks to sample behavior, and asking people for self-reports.
What are reliability and validity?
Reliability of a measure is the extent to which it provides a consistent index of the behavior or topic of interest. Validity of a measure is the extent to which it measures what researches think it measures. For example, a measure of memory is valid only if it can be shown to actually measure memory.
What type of people has most of the research studies in this book used as participants?
Middle-class, well educated European-Americans.
– manipulating key factors that the researcher believes is responsible for a particular behavior and randomly assigning participants to the experimental and control groups. Consists of independent and dependent variables.
Experimental
investigators examine relations between variables as they exist naturally in the world.
Correlational Study
used when researchers want to investigate very rare phenomena such as uncommon diseases or people with extremely high abilities.
Case Study
reflect differences caused by underlying processes, such as biological, psychological, or sociocultural changes
Age effects
differences caused by experiences and circumstances unique to the generation to which one belongs
Cohort effects
reflect differences stemming from sociocultural, environmental, historical, or other events at the time the data are obtained from the participants.
Time of measurement effects
- Developmental differences are identified by testing people of different ages at the same time.
Cross-sectional Designs
the same individuals are observed or tested repeatedly at different points in their lives.
Longitudinal designs
allows researchers to synthesize the results of many studies to estimate relations between variables.
What is a meta-analysis?
Difference between MRI and fMRI
MRIs produce images of brain activity using a powerful magnet and radio waves. FMRIs monitor activities in the brain that re time locked in behavioral performance.
Understand the three approaches to the neuroscience of aging –
1) Neuropsychological approaches – compares brain functioning of healthy older adults with adults displaying various pathological disorders in the brain. 2) Correlational approach – attempts to link measures of cognitive performance to measures of brain structure or functioning. 3) activation imaging approach - attempts to link measures of cognitive performance to measures of brain structure or functioning.
changes that adults go through which allow them to adapt to the inevitable decline of specific areas of the brain
What are compensatory changes?
What links the two brain hemispheres? -
corpus callosum
What are executive functions and where are they carried out in the brain?
the ability to make and carry out plans, switch between tasks, and maintain attention and focus. It is carried out in the frontal cortex.
What brain areas do and do not show shrinkage with age?
the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus (memory), and the cerebellum show profound shrinkage. The sensory cortices, such as the visual cortex, show relatively little shrinkage.
What does the dopaminergic system do?
associated with higher-level cognitive functioning, like inhibiting thoughts, attention, and planning. High dopamine levels are linked to cognitive processing that is effortful and deliberate, not automatic or without effort.
What are under-recruitment and over-recruitment?
under recruitment occurs when neuronal firing is limited when the brain is activated. Over recruitment occurs when additional neurons fire and shore up declining brain structures that are inefficient
What is the default network of the brain?
the regions of the brain that are most active at rest.
suggests that the bilateral activation found in older adults is compensatory in that additional neural units are cruited to increase resources.
HAROLD
suggests that the reason older adults perform at high levels despite neuronal deterioration is because of compensatory scaffolding or the recruitment of additional circuitry to bolster functional decline. Also states that compensation is the brain's response to challenge in general.
STAC
Says the aging brain adapts to neurological decline by recruiting additional neural circuits to perform tasks adequately.
CRUNCH
What is the primary function of the amygdala?
emotion
What does research show about the effects of aerobic exercise on brain health?
improves cognitive functioning in older adults and improves brain health in aging laboratory animals.
What is the positivity effect in older adults?
older adults are more motivated to derive emotional meaning from life and to maintain positive affect.
How does the speed of an animal’s metabolism relate to its life expectancy?
It doesn't.
What is the Hayflick limit?
Cells grown in laboratory culture dishes undergo only a fixed number of divisions before dying with the number of possible divisions dropping depending on the age of the donor organism.
What are telomeres and how do they operate
the tips of the chromosomes which play a major role in aging by adjusting the cell's response to stress and growth stimulation based on cell divisions and DNA damage.
What is cross-linking?
when certain proteins in human cells interact randomly and produce molecules that are linked in such a way as to make the body stiffer.
What are free radicals and how do they act in the body?
- unstable molecules that cause aging. They are highly reactive chemicals produced randomly in normal metabolism. May cause cell damage by changing the oxygen levels in cells.
What’s the relationship between self-esteem and positive feelings about aging?
If you have higher self esteem, you'll feel better about aging.
What are the four steps in the wrinkling process?
The outer layer of skin becomes thinner through cell lose causing skin to become more fragile. Second, the collagen fibers that make up connective tissue lose much of their flexibility, making the skin less able to regain its shape after a pinch. Third, elastin fibers in the middle of skin lose ability to keep the skin stretched out, resulting in sagging. Finally, underlying layer of fat which helps smoothing will diminish.
What are the two major environmental causes of wrinkles?
Smoking and ultraviolet rays
- How does the skin change as we age?
It gets naturally thinner and drier. The coloring changes as the pigment containing cells in outer layer decrease. Age spots show up and moles appear. Varicose veins appear.
What causes hair loss and graying?
destruction of the germ centers that produce hair follicles causes hair loss. Graying results from a cessation of pigment production.
- How does the voice change as we age?
the pitch lowers, we become more breathless, trembling, slower, and have less precise pronunciation.
- How much height do we lose after our 50s, and why?
- Men lose about an inch, women lose about two inches. It's caused by compression of the spine from loss of bone strength, changes in the discs between the vertebrae in the spine, and changes in posture.
- How does our weight typically change as we age?
weight gain is common is middle age, but we lose weight throughout old age due to changes in body metabolism.
How do our muscles change as we age?
- though the amount of muscle tissue declines with age, the loss at even 70 is nor more than 20%. By 80, it's up to 40% and is most sever in legs.
- How do our bones change as we age?
Normal aging is accompanied by loss of bone tissue throughout body which begins in late 30s and accelerates in 50s and slows by 70s. Women lose bone 2x faster than men. Bone tissue becomes more porous with age.
What are the differences between osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis?
Osteoarthritis is when the bones underneath the cartilage become damaged, and marked by gradual onset and progression of pain and disability with minor signs of inflammation. Rheumatoid arthritis – is a more destructive disease of the joints that develops slowly and typically affects different joints and causes other types of pain that osteoarthritis.
What is arthroplasty?
the total replacement of joints damaged by arthritis.
How does the structure of the eye change as we age?
- One – decrease in amount of light that passes through the eye, resulting in need for more light to do tasks like reading. The lens also becomes more yellow, causing poorer color discrimination in the green-blue-violet spectrum, and loses ability to adjust and focus. Also, time needed for our eyes to change focus from near to far increases.
What are presbyopia, cataracts, and glaucoma?
presbyopia: difficulty in seeing close object clearly. Cataracts: develop on the lens and limits amount of light transmitted. Glaucoma: fluid in the eye not draining properly, causing high pressure and can cause internal damage and loss of vision.
What are macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy?
Macular degeneration involves the progressive and irreversible destruction of receptors from any of a number of causes. Results in loss of ability to see details. Leading cause of functional blindness in adults. Diabetic retinopathy is blindness caused by accelerated aging of arteries. Can involve fluid retention in macula, detachment of the retina, hemorrhage, and aneurisms.
What is acuity, and how does it typically change as we age?
the ability to see detail and to discriminate different visual patterns. It declines steadily between ages 20 and 60.
How does exercising while wearing ear buds affect hearing loss?
- the increased blood-flow makes hearing receptors more vulnerable to damage.
What is presbycusis?
The most common age-related hearing problem; reduced sensitivity to high pitched tones.
basic design is always the same. Mold placed in outer ear to pick up sound and send it through a tube to a microphone. Microphone sends sound to amplifier, which sends to a receiver Receiver sends amplified sound to ear.
Analog hearing aid
use directional microphones to control flow of sound. Compression technology increases or decreases as sound rises and falls in room.
Digital Hearing aid
implants do not make sound louder. Broadcasts FM radio signals to electrodes that have been inserted into inner ear during surgery. Simulates auditory nerve fibers directly.
Cochlear implant
How does somesthesia changes as we age?
It decreases and changes.
What is the vestibular system
It's housed deep in the inner ear and designed to respond to the forces of gravity as they act on the head and then to provide this information to parts of the brain that initiate the appropriate movements so that we can maintain balance.
What are dizziness and vertigo?
Dizziness is the vague feeling of being unsteady and vertigo is the sensation that the surroundings are spinning.
How does our sense of taste change as we age?
Declines gradually, and vary a great deal from person to person and flavor to flavor.
- How does our sense of smell change as we age?
- Remains intact until 60s, when it begins to declines. Also varies across people and odors.
- How do the heart and arteries change as we age?
Fat deposits accumulate causing the stiffening of the heart muscle caused by tissue changes. This may form a continuous sheet. The heart ends up having to work harder. Amount of blood able to be pumped declines. Arteries also harden by calcification of arterial walls and by replacement of elastic fibers with less elastic ones.
What is the leading cause of death in the US?
cardiovascular diseases
How have rates of cardiovascular disease been changing in men since the 80s?
They have been declining
HDL and LDL – which is good and which is bad?
HDL is good cholesterol, and LDL is bad.
What is congestive heart failure?
when cardiac output and the ability of the heart to contract severely decline, making the heart enlarge, pressure in the veins increase, and the body swell.
What is angina pectoris and how is it treated?
when the oxygen supply to the heart muscle becomes insufficient, resulting in chest pain. It is treated by nitroglycerine or surgical procedures or colornary bypass surgery .
- What is a myocardial infarction?
when blood supply to the heart is severely reduced or cut off.
What is atherosclerosis?
an age related disease caused by the buildup of fat deposits on and the calcification of the arterial walls.
What is a cerebrovascular accident, two common problems after one happens?
when blood flow to a portion of the brain is completely cut off. Otherwise known as a stroke. Two problems are aphasia (problems with speech) and hemiplegia (paralysis on one side of body)
What are systolic pressure and diastolic pressure?
systolic is when the heart contracts as it pumps blood through the body, and the diastolic pressure is the relaxation phase between beats.
What is hypertension, common causes?
hypertension is when the blood pressure increases become severe, defined at 140mm systolic pressure. Caused primarily by stress and sodium.
What is hypotension?
low blood pressure, like when you stand up quickly after lying down or sitting. Related with anemia.
How do the lungs change as we age?
They gradually change to a gray color and they become stiffer.
What are COPD, emphysema?
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or the most common and incapacitating respiratory disorder in older adults. Emphysema is the most serious type of COPD and is characterized by the destruction of the membranes around the air sacs in the lungs.
What is the AQI and what does it measure?
Air quality index, measures air quality.
What are the climacteric, menopause, perimenopause
climacteric occurs during which a woman will pass from her reproductive to non reproductive years. Menopause is when ovaries stop releasing eggs. Perimenopause begins in 40s as menstrual cycles become more irregular and some women experience night sweats.
How is sexual functioning affected by menopause
You are less interested in sex.
-
How do testosterone levels, sperm quality, and male sexual functioning change as we age?
- There is no physiological changes, but there is a decline in testosterone levels. Do experience a decline in quantity of sperm. Older men less able to ejaculate, need more time and stimulation, and need longer to fill back up.
- What are dendrites, cell body, terminal branches, axons, neurotransmitters, synapses?
- Dendrites are at the left end of a neuron which pick up chemical signals coming in from other nearby neurons. Cell body converts electrochemical impulses. Terminal branches act like transmitter stations. Neurotransmitters are released at terminal branches and carry information signal to next neurons dendrites. Are necessary for communication between neurons. Synapses are gaps between terminal branches of one neuron and the dendrites of another.
- Can neurons regenerate? -
No
What are neurofibrillary tangles
when fibers in the axon become twisted together to form paired helical filaments.
What is plasticity as it relates to changes in dendrites, and how does exercise affect it? -
plasticity is the capability of the brain to adapt its functional structural organization to current requirements exercise increases levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor and other brain growth factors, which play role in supporting survival and growth of neurons.
What are amyloid plaques?
produced by damaged and dying neurons hat gather around a core of protein.
What is Parkinson’s disease, what drug can bring on its symptoms, and how is the disease treated?
When the level of dopamine decreases, if the decline is extreme due to loss of dopamine-producing neurons. Characterized by tremors, rigidity or stiffness, shuffling walking style. There is no cure, but treated through medication and brain pacemakers.
How does core body temperature regulation change as we age?-
Older people are less likely to notice they are cold., and have less ability to raise core body temperature when it drops. They also have trouble responding to high heat and do not sweat as much.
How do sleep patterns change as we age?
Older people do not fall asleep as easily.
What is sleep apnea?
stopping breathing during sleep.
commonly called average life expectancy and refers to the age at which half of the individuals who are born in a particular year will have died.
Average Longevity
oldest age to which any individual of a species lives
Maximum longevity
living to a healthy old age
Active life expectancy
living a long time
dependent life expectancy
- How does women’s and men’s average longevity at birth compare?
- Womens average longevity is about five years more than mens's at birth.
What is valuation of life?
the degree to which a person is attached to his or her present life.
- How does age affect how quickly the immune system builds up immunity against diseases? -
Older adults are more susceptible to certain infections and have a much higher risk of cancer.
What is psychoneuroimmunology
??
What changes in the vaginal wall with aging affect risk of HIV infection?-
The thinning of the vaginal wall means it is more likely to tear, making it easier for HIV to enter the bloodstream.
Differences between acute and chronic – acute
conditions that develop over a short period of time and cause a rapid change in health. Chronic diseases: conditions that last a longer period of time ( at least three months) and may be accompanied by residual functional impairment that necessitates long term management.