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Late Adulthood
Centenarians
Centenarians individuals 100 years and older
Chapter 17:
Physical Development in Late Adulthood
Late adulthood
60 to 120 or 125
Longest span 50 to 60 years
1
Longevity
fifty add 10
sixty add 2 years
NOTE:
Centenarians live longer because they have the
ability to cope successfully with stress.
What chance do you have of living 100?
GENES
Factors that affect life expectancy:
1. family history
2. marital status
3. economic status
4. physique
5. exercise
6. smoking
7. alcohol
8. disposition
9. education
10. environment
11. sleep
12. temperature
13. health care
LIFE EXPECTANCY ACROSS CULTURES
OA
W
M
Okinawa
81.2
86
78
Factors that affects life expectancy in Okinawa:
1. Diet eat heavy on grains, fish and vegetables and
low on meat, egg, and dairy products.
2. Low-stress lifestyle easygoing lifestyle.
3. Caring community look out for each other and do
not isolate or ignore the older adults.
4. Activity active, engaging in activities such as
walking and gardening.
5. Spirituality finds a sense of purpose. Prayer is
commonplace and believed to ease the mind.
2.
3.
4.
Mitochondrial Theory
- decay of the mitochondria- which are tiny cellular
bodies that supplies energy for function, growth, and
repair and plays and important role in neural plasticity.
2
The Course of Physical Development
in Late Adulthood
THE AGING BRAIN
BRAIN LOSES
Weight
- 5 to 10%
Volume
- 15%
CHANGES IN THE BRAIN OCCUR DUE TO:
1. Result from decrease in dendrites
2. Damage of myelin sheath that covers axons
3. Death of brain cells
Prefrontal cortex shrinks with aging linked with decrease in
working memory and cognitive activities.
Slowing of function in the brain and spinal cord:
1. Physical coordination
2.
3.
4.
No knee jerk
Slower reflex
Intellectual performance
Timed cognitive tests
Reduction in the production of neurotransmitters.
a. acetylcholine decline in memory functioning;
associated with memory loss in Alzheimers
disease
b.
c.
Neurotransmitter
Acetylcholine
Dopamine
Gamma-aminobutyric
acid (GABA)
Dendritic growth:
40 70 years old
90 years old
Dendrites increased
No growth
NOTE:
Lack of dendritic growth could be due to a lack of
environmental stimulation and activity.
Aging brain can adapt:
1. As brains age, they can shift responsibilities for a
given task from one region to another.
o Rewires Compensates what the other
lacks
2. Changes in lateralization
o Using both hemispheres
o Dominant left hemisphere
Memory functioning
Alzheimers Disease
Motor activities
Parkinsons disease
Control precise of signal sent
from one neuron to another
4.
SENSORY DEVELOPMENT
Sensory decline linked to cognitive functioning
Sensory acuity, linked to how well others:
1. bathed and groomed themselves,
2. complete household chores,
3. engaged in intellectual activities
3.
Hearing
Legally deaf degeneration of cochlea, primary neural
receptor for hearing in the inner ear.
Devices that minimize problems linked to hearing loss:
1. Hearing aids amplify sound to reduce middle earbases conductive hearing loss.
2. Cochlear implants restore hearing following
neurosensory hearing loss
3. Stem cells alternative to cochlear implants
Vision
Visual Acuity
Changes:
1. night driving tolerance for glare diminishes
2. dark adaptation adults recover longer when going
from a well-lighted room to semidarkness
3. area of the visual field becomes smaller changes
suggesting that the intensity in the peripheral area of
the visual fields needs to be increased if the stimulus
is to be seen
4. visual decline reduction in the quality and intensity
of light reaching the retina
60 years of age
75
Beyond 75
85
Beyond 85
Color Vision
Changes:
color vision yellowing of the lenses of the eye
green-blue-violet part of the color spectrum trouble:
navy socks vs black socks
Depth Perception
Changes:
how far or near, high or low street curbs
Diseases of the Eyes
Diseases:
1. Cataracts thickening of the lens of the eye that
causes vision to become cloudy, opaque, and
distorted.
- 70 years old cataract
- treatment: glasses surgery to remove
2.
Effects of decline:
1. Smell Taste
2. Reduce enjoyment of food and life satisfaction
3. Reduce the ability to detect smoke
4. Compensate by eating sweeter, spicier, and saltier
foods
2.
3.
4.
Obesity
Stiffening of blood vessels
Lack of exercise
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Hypertension
Hearing impairments
Heart conditions
Chronic sinus problems
Visual impairments
Orthopedic impairments of the back, extremities, etc.
Arteriosclerosis
diabetes
exercises
improve
lung
SEXUALITY
Effects:
1. Less frequent orgasm occurring every second or
third attempt direct stimulation is needed
2. Older adults are sexually active as long as they are
healthy
3. No sex poor health
4. Good sexual life and interest in sex related to
middle and late
5. Sexually active life was longer in men
6. Sexually active women no partner men: dead or
with younger women
3
Health
HEALTH PROBLEMS
Chronic disease slow onset, long duration
- rare increase common
Common chronic disorder:
1. Arthritis
2. Hypertension
3. Visual problems - women
Hearing problems men
Most prevalent chronic condition:
1. Arthritis
Arthritis
Arthritis inflammation of the joints accompanied by pain,
stiffness, and movement problems.
- affect hips, knees, ankles, fingers and vertebrae
- no known cure
- symptoms can be reduced
Symptoms can be reduced by:
1. Drugs aspirin
2. Range-pf motion exercises for the afflicted joints
3. Weight reduction
4. Replacement of the crippled joint with prosthesis
5. Exercise
Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis chronic condition that involves extensive loss
of bone tissue.
- why older adults walk with marked stoop
- women men
- common in non-Latina White, thin and smallframed
Prevention:
1. Eat foods rich in Calcium
2. More exercise
3. No smoking
4. Vitamin C supplement
Accidents
Accidents sixth leading cause of death among older adults
Common: falls and pneumonia
healing and recuperation slower in adults long-term
hospital care or home care
Tai Chi a form of balance training, improved the coordination
of older adults in challenging situations
pulmonary disease
congestive heart failure
coronary artery disease
hypertension
type 2 diabetes
obesity
Alzheimers disease
4. Exercise improves older adults cellular functioning.
- telomere length was greater in leukocytes when
engage in aerobic activity.
5. Exercise improves immune system functioning in older
adults.
6. Exercise can optimize body composition and reduce
the decline in motor skills as aging occurs.
- increase muscle mass and bone mass
- decrease bone fragility
7. Exercise reduces the likelihood that older adults will
develop mental health problems and can be effective in
treatment of mental health problems.
8. Exercise is liked to improved brain and cognitive
functioning in older adults.
- increase information-processing skills
Failure to increase exercise:
1. chronic illness
2. life crises
3. embarrassment
4. why bother factor
HEALTH TREATMENT
NOTE:
Development of alternative home and communitybased care has decreased the percentage of older
adults who live in nursing homes
Age nursing homes
Important factor related to health and survival in
nursing home
patients feelings control and selfdetermination decide on their own
caring nursing home and staff who want to
help
Self-control or responsible improvement
Measured stress-related hormones
coping skills, say no, assertive training, time
management
effect: low levels of cortisol (hormone closely
related to stress that has been implicated in a
number of diseases)
Chapter 18:
Cognitive Development in Late Adulthood
Late adulthood
60 to 120 or 125
Longest span 50 to 60 years
1
Cognitive Functioning in Older Adults
MULTIDIMENSIONALITY AND
MULTIDIRECTIONALITY
Cognitive Mechanics and Cognitive Pragmatics
Cognitive Mechanics
hardware of the mind and reflect the neurophysical
architecture of the brain developed through evolutions.
- consists of
1) speed and accuracy of the processes involved in
sensory input;
2) attention;
3) visual and motor memory;
4) discrimination;
5) comparison;
6) categorization
- because of influence of biology, heredity, and health
decline in old age
- fluid mechanics
Cognitive Pragmatics
culture-based software programs of the mind.
- includes:
1) Reading and writing skills;
2) language comprehension;
3) educational qualifications;
4) professional skills;
5) knowledge about the self and life skills
- culture improvement in old age
- crystallized pragmatics
Factors that contribute to the decline in fluid mechanics in
late adulthood:
1. Decline in processing speed
2. Working memory capacity
3. Suppressing irrelevant information (inhibition)
Speed of Processing
speed of processing declines in late adulthood due to a
decline in functioning of the brain and CNR.
health and exercise influence how much decline in
processing speed occurs.
Attention
Three aspects:
1. Selective Attention
- focusing on a specific aspect of experience that is
relevant while ignoring those that are irrelevant
- examples:
ability to focus on one voice in a crowded room
search for a feature
2. Divided Attention
- involves concentrating on more than one activity at the
same time.
3. Sustained Attention
- focused and extended engagement with an object,
task, event, or some other aspect of the environment
- vigilance
- examples:
Complex laboratory tasks
Memory
Note:
Semantic memory
- a persons knowledge about the world
- includes fields of expertise, general academic
knowledge, and everyday knowledge
- independent of an individuals personal identity with
the past
- tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon, in which
individuals can retrieve the information but have the
feeling that they should be able to retrieve it.
3.
Cognitive resources
a. Working memory
short term memory but places more
emphasis on memory as a place for mental
work
- examples:
manipulate and assemble information when
making decisions
solving problems
comprehending written and spoken
language
b.
Perceptual speed
- ability to perform simple perceptual-motor
tasks
- examples
Deciding whether pairs of two-digit or twoletter strings are the same or different
Determining the time required to step on
the brakes when the car directly ahead
stops
Reaction time
c.
d.
Explicit memory
- memory of facts and experiences that
individuals consciously know and can state
- declarative memory
- explicit > implicit
Implicit memory
- memory without conscious recollection
- involves skills and routine procedures that are
automatically performed
4.
Source memory
- ability to remember where one learned something
5.
Prospective memory
- involves remembering to do something in the future
- deficits time-based > event-based
6.
7.
Education
Return to
college
Better
educated
Work
Manual labor
Health
Cognitively
oriented labor
Healthier
Education
Conclusion:
Some aspects of memory decline in older adults
Decline episodic and working memory
Decline in perceptual speed linked to memory decline
Successful aging reduces memory decline
Decision Making
Note:
Wisdom
Wisdom expert knowledge about the practical aspects of life
that permits excellent judgment about important matters.
Work
Complex work linked with higher intellectual functioning in
older adults
Health
Education
Return to
college
Better
educated
Work
Manual labor
Health
Cognitively
oriented labor
Healthier
NOTE:
Cognitive vitality improved through cognitive and
physical fitness training
USE IT OR LOSE IT
NOTE:
Changes in the brain can influence cognitive
functioning and changes in cognitive functioning can
influence the brain.
Links between aging + cognitive neuroscience:
1. Neural circuits in specific regions of the brains
PFC is linked to poorer performance by older adults
on complex reasoning tasks, working memory, and
episodic memory tasks.
2. Both hemispheres compensate for aging declines.
3. Functioning of the hippocampus declines.
4. Patterns of neural decline with aging are larger for
retrieval than encoding.
5.
6.
7.
2
Language Development
What:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
3
Work and Retirement
WORK
NOTE:
1. Retirees partially retire
a. Part time
b. Change career
2. Adults maintain productivity
Continued employment:
1. Good health
2. Strong physiological commitment to work
3. Distaste for retirement
4. Educational attainment
5. Working spouse
Reciprocal relation higher cognitive ability work
intellectual functioning
Financial
Stay busy
give back
Japanese
US
Germans
Chinese
Turkish
WORK
Miss
Less
Least
Most
Most
MONEY
Least
Less
-Least
Most
Work:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Chinese, Turkish
Japanese
US
Germans
Money:
1. Turkish
2. US
3. Chinese, Japanese
ADJUSTMENT TO RETIREMENT
NOTE:
1. Satisfied lived and better health: remarried
women > not married women
2. adjust best to retirement:
a. healthy
b. have adequate income
c. active
d. educated
e. extended social network
f. satisfied with lives
3. most difficult to adjust:
a. inadequate income
b. poor health
c. added stress
4. difficulty in adjusting to retirement had:
a. strong attachment to work
b. lack of control
c. low self-efficacy
5. improve adaptation by:
a. cultivating interests
6. workers:
a. not confident about pension benefits
b. count on benefits that wont be there when
they retire
c. dont heed advice about retirement
d. overestimate long-term care coverage
e. savings are modest
f. know little about social security income
Flexibility factor to adjusting in retirement
4
Mental Health
Mental disorder increasingly dependent on the help and
care of others
Effects of mental health disorder:
1. loss in dollars
2. loss of human potential
3. suffering
DEPRESSION
Major depression mood disorder in which the individual is
deeply unhappy, demoralized, derogatory and bored
- common cold of mental disorders
- treatable medications and
psychotherapy + spiritual involvement
Person:
1. does not feel well,
2. loses stamina easily
3. has poor appetite
4. listless
5. unmotivated
Lower frequency of depressive symptoms:
1. fewer economic hardships
2. fewer negative social interchanges
3. increased religiosity
4. engage in regular exercise
Depressive symptoms in oldest-old:
1. women
2. more physical disability
3. cognitive impairment
4. lower SES
Predictors of depression in older adults:
1. earlier depressive symptoms
2. poor health
3. disability
4. loss events
5. low social support
Result of depression:
sadness suicide
Insomnia overlooked risk factor of depression
2. Alzheimer Disease
- form of dementia
- progressive, irreversible disorder characterized by
deterioration of memory, reasoning, language, and
eventually physical function
- deficiency in acetylcholine important in memory
- note:
As the disease progresses, the brain shrinks and
deteriorates.
Deterioration
amyloid plaques dense deposits of
proteins that accumulate in blood
vessels
neurofibrillary tangles twisted fibers
that build up in neurons
Oxidative stress occurs when the bodys
antioxidant defenses dont cope with the freeradical attacks and oxidation in the body.
Causes:
Genes (identical twins)
Age
Apolipoprotein E (apo E) linked to
increasing presence of plaques and
tangles.
Lifestyles
Risk factors:
Obesity
Smoking
Atherosclerosis
High cholesterol
Lipids
- 2 types:
a. early-onset initially occurring in individuals
younger than 65 years of age
- rare
b. late-onset initially occurring in individuals
65 years of age and older
- important agenda:
bio and envi factors
development of preventive strategies
maintenance
Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)
represents a traditional state between the cognitive
changes of normal aging and Alzheimer disease
- provides a break away from the burden of providing
chronic care.
3. Multi-Infract dementia
- sporadic and progressive loss of intellectual
functioning caused by repeated temporary obstruction
of blood flow in cerebral arteries
- results series of mini strokes
- note:
Infract temporary obstruction of blood vessels
- men with a history of HBD
- symptoms:
Confusion
Slurring of speech
Writing impairment
4. Parkinsons Disease
- chronic, progressive disease characterized by muscle
tremors, slowing of movement and partial face
paralysis
- degeneration of dopamine
- treatment:
Administer L-dopa converted by the brain into
dopamine
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) implantation of
electrodes within the brain stimulated by a
pacemaker-like device
Dance (tango)
Stem cell transplantation
Gene therapy
CAUSES
Dementia
Alzheimer
disease
TREATMENTS
Deterioration due to
amyloid plaques
dense deposits of
proteins that
accumulate in blood
vessels
neurofibrillary
tangles twisted
fibers that build up in
neurons
Multi-infract
dementia
Parkinsons
disease
Oxidative stress
temporary
obstruction of blood
flow in cerebral
arteries
degeneration of
dopamine
Exercise
Improved diet
Appropriate drugs
L-dopa converted
by the brain into
dopamine
Deep brain
stimulation (DBS)
implantation of
electrodes within
the brain stimulated
by a pacemaker-like
device
Dance (tango)
Stem cell
transplantation
Gene therapy
5
Religion
Spirituality:
1. lower depression
2. derives a sense of meaning in life
3. higher levels of life satisfaction,
4. higher levels of self-esteem,
5. higher levels of optimism
6. sense of well being
7. better health
8. slower rates of cognitive decline
9. reduction in mortality
10. provide psychological needs
a. help face impending death
b. find meaning
c. find significance
d. accept losses
e. social activities
f. social support
g. leadership roles
prayer and meditation - reduce stress and dampen bodys
production of stress hormones