During what period of life do worries about death peak for most people quizlet?

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Thanatology

Thanatology
The study of death and dying, especially of the social and emotional aspects
Thanatology is not morbid or gloomy.
It reveals the reality of hope in death, acceptance of dying, and reaffirmation of life.
Death in Childhood

Perceptions vary by age.
Children have a different perspective of death.
Older children turn into more concrete operational thinkers; they seek specific facts and become less anxious about death and dying.
Death in Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood

Teenagers have little fear of death (they take risks, place a high value on appearance, and seek thrills).
Adolescents often predict that they will die at an early age and their developmental tendency toward risk taking can be deadly (e.g., suicides, homicides, car accidents).
Romanticizing death makes young people vulnerable to cluster suicides, foolish dares, fatal gang fights, and drunk driving.
Death in Adulthood

When adults become responsible for work and family death is to be avoided or at least postponed.
Many adults quit taking addictive drugs, start wearing seat belts, and adopt other precautions.
Death anxiety usually increases from one's teens to one's 20s and then gradually decreases.
Ages 25 to 60: Terminally ill adults worry about leaving something undone or leaving family members—especially children—alone.
Death in Late Adulthood

Death anxiety decreases and hope rises.
One sign of mental health among older adults is acceptance of their own mortality and altruistic concern about those who will live on after them.
Many older adults accept death (e.g. they write their wills, designate health care proxies, reconcile with estranged family members, plan their funeral).
The acceptance of death does not mean that the elderly give up on living!
Is a Toothache Worse Than Death?

Religions and Hope

People who think they might die soon are more likely than others to believe in life after death.
Virtually every world religion provides rites and customs to honor the dead and comfort the living.
Although not everyone observes religious customs, those who care for the dying and their families need extraordinary sensitivity to cultural traditions.
Near-Death Experience

An episode in which a person comes close to dying but survives and reports having left his or her body and having moved toward a bright white light while feeling peacefulness and joy.
Near-death experiences often include religious elements.
Survivors often adopt a more spiritual, less materialistic view of life.
To some, near-death experiences prove that there is a heaven but scientists are more skeptical.
Dying and Acceptance

Good death
A death that is peaceful, quick, and painless and that occurs after a long life, in the company of family and friends, and in familiar surroundings.
People in all religious and cultural contexts hope for a good death.
Bad death
Lacks these six characteristics and is dreaded, particularly by the elderly
Stages of Dying: Kübler-Ross

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified emotions and stages experienced by dying people.
Denial "I am not really dying."
Anger "I blame my doctors, or my family, or God for my death."
Bargaining "I will be good from now on if I can live."
Depression "I don't care about anything; nothing matters anymore."
Acceptance "I accept my death as part of life."
Stage Model Based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Physiological needs (freedom from pain)
Safety (no abandonment)
Love and acceptance (from close family and friends)
Respect (from caregivers)
Self-actualization (spiritual transcendence)
Telling the Truth

Most dying people want to spend time with loved ones and to talk honestly with medical and religious professionals.
It is unethical to withhold information if the patient asks for it although some people do not want the whole truth.
Hospital personnel need to respond to each dying person as an individual, not merely as someone who must understand that death is near.
Hospice

Hospice
Institution or program in which terminally ill patients receive palliative care
Hospice caregivers provide skilled treatment to relieve pain and discomfort; they avoid measures to delay death and their focus is to make dying easier
Two principles for hospice care
Each patient's autonomy and decisions are respected.
Family members and friends are counseled before the death, shown how to provide care, and helped after the death.
Palliative Medicine

Palliative care
Care designed not to treat an illness but to provide physical and emotional comfort to the patient and support and guidance to his or her family.
Double effect
An ethical situation in which an action (such as administering opiates) has both a positive effect, which is intended (relieving a terminally ill person's pain), and a negative effect, which is foreseen but not intended (hastening death by suppressing respiration).
Deciding When Death Occurs

Brain death
Prolonged cessation of all brain activity with complete absence of voluntary movements; no spontaneous breathing; no response to pain, noise, and other stimuli.
Brain waves have ceased; the EEG is flat; the person is dead.
Locked-in syndrome
Person cannot move, except for the eyes, but brain waves are still apparent.
Person is not dead.
Deciding When Death Occurs

Coma
State of deep unconsciousness from which the person cannot be aroused.
Some people awaken spontaneously from a coma; others enter a vegetative state; the person is not dead.
Vegetative state
State of deep unconsciousness in which all cognitive functions are absent, although eyes may open, sounds may be emitted, and breathing may continue; the person is not yet dead.
This state can be transient, persistent, or permanent.
No one has ever recovered after two years; most who recover (about 15 percent) improve within three weeks.
After time has elapsed, the person may, effectively, be dead.
Hastening or Postponing Death

Longer life
Average person lived twice as long in 2010 as in 1910.
Later death due to drugs, surgery, and other interventions (e.g., respirators, defibrillators, stomach tubes, and antibiotics).
Many adults under age 50 once died of causes that now kill relatively few adults in developed nations, such as complications of childbirth and epidemic diseases.
Allowing Death

Passive euthanasia
Situation in which a seriously ill person is allowed to die naturally, through the cessation of medical intervention.
DNR (do not resuscitate)
Written order from a physician (sometimes initiated by a patient's advance directive or by a health care proxy's request) that no attempt should be made to revive a patient if he or she suffers cardiac or respiratory arrest.
Allowing Death

Active euthanasia
Situation in which someone takes action to bring about another person's death, with the intention of ending that person's suffering.
Legal under some circumstances in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, but it is illegal (yet rarely prosecuted) in most other nations.
Physician-assisted suicide
Form of active euthanasia in which a doctor provides the means for someone to end his or her own life.
Slippery Slope

Definition
A given action will start a chain of events that will culminate in an undesirable outcome.
Slippery slope relating to death
Hastening death when terminally ill people request may cause a society to slide into killing sick people who are not ready to die—especially the old and the poor.
Advance Directives

Advance directive
Document that contains an individual's instructions for end-of-life medical care, written before such care is needed.
Living will
Document that indicates what kinds of medical intervention an individual wants or does not want if he or she becomes incapable of expressing those wishes.
Health care proxy
Person chosen by another person to make medical decisions if the second person becomes unable to do so.
Normal Grief

Bereavement
Sense of loss following a death
Grief
Powerful sorrow that an individual feels at the death of another
Mourning
Ceremonies and behaviors that a religion or culture prescribes for people to employ in expressing their bereavement after a death
Complicated Grief

Absent grief
Situation in which overly private people cut themselves off from the community and customs that allow and expect grief; can lead to social isolation.
Disenfranchised grief
Situation in which certain people, although they are bereaved, are prevented from mourning publicly by cultural customs or social restrictions.
Incomplete Grief

Incomplete grief
Situation in which circumstances, such as a police investigation or an autopsy, interfere with the process of grieving.
Grief process may be incomplete if mourning is cut short or if other people are distracted from their role in recovery.
Mourning

Mourning
Ceremonies and behaviors that a religion or culture prescribes for people to employ in expressing their bereavement after a death
Mourning customs designed to move grief from loss toward reaffirmation
Placing Blame And Seeking Meaning

Placing blame
Common impulse after death for the survivors (e.g., for medical measures not taken, laws not enforced, unhealthy habits not changed)
Bereaved sometimes blame the dead person, sometimes themselves, and sometimes distant others
Nations may blame one another for public tragedies
Blame is not necessarily rational
Placing Blame And Seeking Meaning

Seeking meaning
Often starts with preserving memories (e.g., displaying photographs, telling anecdotes)
Support groups offer help when friends are unlikely to understand (e.g., groups for parents of murdered children).
Organizations devoted to causes such as fighting cancer and banning handguns often find supporters among people who have lost a loved one to that particular circumstance.
Close family members may start a charity.
Diversity of Reactions

Reactions to death are varied.
Other people need to be especially responsive to whatever needs a grieving person may have.
Most bereaved people recover within a year.
A feeling of having an ongoing bond with the deceased is no longer thought to be pathological.

Theories of Late Adulthood

Development is more diverse in late adulthood than at any other age.
Some elderly people run marathons and lead nations, while others are no longer able to move or think.
Many social scientists have tried to understand these variations as well as the general course of old age.
Theories of Late Adulthood

Self theories
Theories of late adulthood that emphasize the core self, or the search to maintain one's integrity and identity
Integrity versus despair
Final stage of Erik Erikson's developmental sequence, in which older adults seek to integrate their unique experiences with their vision of community
Theories of Late Adulthood

Most older people consider their personalities and attitudes to have remained quite stable over their life span, even as they recognize the physical changes of their bodies.
Objects and places become more precious in late adulthood than they were earlier, as a way to hold on to identity.
Theories of Late Adulthood

Continuity theory
Each person experiences the changes of late adulthood and behaves toward others in a way that is consistent with his or her behavior in earlier periods of life.
Each innovation is a new expression of the old self.
One source of continuity is temperament.
The Big Five personality traits (are maintained throughout old age as in younger years.
Theories of Late Adulthood

Selective optimization with compensation
Central to self theories
Positivity effect
Tendency for elderly people to perceive, prefer, and remember positive images and experiences more than negative ones.
Selective memory is a way to compensate for whatever troubles occur.
Unpleasant experiences are reinterpreted as inconsequential.
Theories of Late Adulthood

Self-perception
Normally tilts toward integrity rather than despair.
Ideal self and real self come closer together.
As self theory contends, self-acceptance leads to happiness.
Keep the Peace

Theories of Late Adulthood

Stratification theories
Emphasize that social forces, particularly those related to a person's social stratum, or social category
Limit individual choices
Affect a person's ability to function in late adulthood as past stratification continues to limit life in various ways
Theories of Late Adulthood

Stratification by age
Industrialized nations segregate elderly people, gradually shunting them out of the mainstream of society as they grow older.
Segregation by age harms everyone because it creates socialization deficits for members of all age groups.
Theories of Late Adulthood

Stratification by gender
Stratification puts males and females on separate tracks through life.
Stratification by ethnicity
Ethnic background affects every aspect of development lifelong, including education, health, place of residence, and employment.
Theories of Late Adulthood

Stratification by socioeconomic status
Pivotal influence on the well-being of the elderly may be financial, not directly gender, ethnicity, or age.
Income correlates with those three but is not caused by them.
Older and Poorer

Theories of Late Adulthood

Disengagement theory
Aging makes a person's social sphere increasingly narrow
Resulting in role relinquishment, withdrawal, and passivity
Activity theory
Elderly people want and need to remain active in a variety of social spheres—with relatives, friends, and community groups—and become withdrawn only unwillingly, as a result of ageism
Activities in Late Adulthood

Work
The activities of older people are intense and varied.
The psychological benefits of work can be obtained through volunteer work.
Work provides social support and status, boosting self-esteem.
For many people, employment allows generativity.
Activities in Late Adulthood

Work or retirement?
Besides needing the money, some employees over age 65 stay on the job because they appreciate the social recognition and self-fulfillment that work brings.
Many people once believed that older adults were healthier and happier when they were employed than when they were unemployed and that retirement led to illness and death.
Only when retirement is precipitated by poor health or fading competence does it correlate with illness.
Activities in Late Adulthood

Activities in Late Adulthood

Home, sweet home
One of the favorite activities of many retirees is caring for their own homes.
In keeping up with household tasks and maintaining their property, many older people demonstrate that they prefer to age in place.
They want to stay in the same dwelling where they lived as younger adults, adjusting but not leaving when health fades.
Activities in Late Adulthood

Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC)
A neighborhood or apartment complex whose population is mostly retired people who moved to the location as younger adults and never left.
An important reason for both aging in place and NORCs is the social convoy, the result of years of close relationships.
Activities in Late Adulthood

Continuing education
About one out of five U.S. adults age 66 and older was enrolled in some kind of continuing education in 2005.
Most elderly students are motivated primarily by a desire for personal or social improvement.
In some ways, late adulthood is an ideal time for learning.
Activities in Late Adulthood

Religious involvement
Older adults are less likely to attend religious services than are the middle-aged.
But, faith increases with age, as do praying and other religious practices.
Religious institutions fulfill many needs, and a nearby house of worship is one reason American elders prefer to age in place.
Activities in Late Adulthood

Political activism
Fewer older people turn out for massive rallies and only about 2% volunteer in political campaigns.
More older people write letters to their elected representatives, vote, and identify with a political party.
Many government policies affect the elderly, especially those regarding housing, pensions, prescription drugs, and medical costs.
Friends and Relatives

Long-term partnerships
Spouses buffer each other against the problems of old age, thus extending life.
Married older adults are healthier, wealthier, and happier than unmarried people their age.
Shared laughter
One characteristic of long-married couples is that they often mirror each other's moods.
Thanks to the positivity effect, the mood is often one of joy.
Friends and Relatives

One of the amazing aspects of long-term relationships is how interdependent the partners become over time.
Another aspect of long marriages also suggests mutual respect.
Generally, older spouses accept each other's frailties, assisting with the partner's physical and psychological needs.
Friends and Relatives

Impact of retirement
In addition to relinquishing the work role, retirees must usually adjust the marriage interaction, now that they will be spending more time at home with their spouse.
This increased interaction sometimes precipitates relationship conflicts.
Friends and Relatives

Death of a spouse
Another common event that long-married older adults must face is the death of their spouse.
Adjustment to being widowed is especially difficult during the first two years after the death.
Because women tend to marry older men, the average married woman experiences 4 to 10 years of widowhood and the average man, none.
Friends and Relatives

Relationships with younger generations
In past centuries, most adults died before their grandchildren were born.
Today, some families span five generations.
Beanpole family consists of multiple generations but only a few members in each one.
Friends and Relatives

Conflict
Although elderly people's relationships with members of younger generations are usually positive, they can also include tension and conflict.
Few older adults stop parenting simply because their children are grown.
Adult children also imagine parental disapproval, even if it is not outwardly expressed.
Friends and Relatives

Friends and Relatives

Feelings of familism prompt siblings, cousins, and even more distant relatives to seek out one another.
Filial responsibility
The obligation of adult children to care for their aging parents.
A major goal among adults in the United States is to be self-sufficient.
Adult children may be more willing to offer support than their parents are to receive it.
Friends and Relatives

Relationships between parents and adult children are affected by many factors:
Assistance arises from need and from the ability to provide.
Frequency of contact is related to geographical proximity, not affection.
Love is influenced by the interaction remembered from childhood.
Sons feel stronger obligation; daughters feel stronger affection.
Friends and Relatives

Grandchildren
Most (85%) elders over age 65 are grandparents.
Factors influencing the nature of the grandparent-grandchild relationship:
personality
ethnicity
national background
past family interactions
age and the personality of the child
Friends and Relatives

In developed nations, grandparents fill one of four roles:
Remote
Companionate
Involved
Surrogate
Friends and Relatives

Friends
Many middle-aged adults, married and unmarried, have no children.
Elderly people who have spent a lifetime without a spouse usually have friendships, activities, and social connections.
All the research finds that older adults need at least one close companion.
The Frail Elderly

Frail elderly
People over age 65, and often over age 85, who are physically infirm, very ill, or cognitively disabled.
Most older adults become frail if they live long enough.
Frailty is most common in the months preceding death.
The Frail Elderly

Activities of daily life
Actions that are important to independent living, typically identified as five tasks of self-care:
Eating
Bathing,
Toileting
Dressing
Transferring from a bed to a chair
Inability to perform any of these tasks is a sign of frailty.
The Frail Elderly

Instrumental activities of daily life (IADLs)
Actions (for example, paying bills and driving a car) that are important to independent living and that require some intellectual competence and forethought.
The ability to perform these tasks may be even more critical to self-sufficiency than ADL ability.
The Frail Elderly

The Frail Elderly

Caring for the frail elderly
Family caregivers experience substantial stress.
Their health may suffer, and their risk of depression increases, especially if the care receiver has dementia.
In the U.S., the spouse is the usual caregiver.
The Frail Elderly

Even in ideal circumstances with community support, family caregiving can present problems.
If one adult child is the primary caregiver, other siblings tend to feel relief or jealousy.
Care receivers and caregivers often disagree about schedules, menus, doctor visits, and so on.
Resentments on both sides disrupt mutual affection and appreciation.
Public agencies rarely provide services unless an emergency arises.
The Frail Elderly

When caregiving results in resentment and social isolation, the risk of depression, poor health, and abuse escalates.
Abuse is likely when:
Care receiver is a feeble person who suffers severe memory loss
Caregiver is a drug-addicted relative
Care occurs in an isolated place
Visitors are few and far between
The Frail Elderly

Research
About 5 percent of elders say they are abused.
Up to one-fourth of all elders are vulnerable but do not report abuse.
Elders who are mistreated by family members are ashamed to admit it.
Outright abuse is now rare in nursing homes.
In the U.S., the trend over the past 20 years has been toward fewer nursing-home residents (currently about 1.5 million people nationwide).
Alternative Care

Assisted living
A living arrangement for elderly people that combines privacy and independence with medical supervision.
Assisted-living facilities range from group homes for three or four elderly people to large apartment or townhouse developments for hundreds of residents.

Prejudice and Predictions

Ageism
Is a form of prejudice in which people are categorized and judged solely on the basis of their chronological age
Considers people as part of a category and not as individuals
Elderspeak
Is a condescending way of speaking to older adults that resembles baby talk, with simple and short sentences, exaggerated emphasis, repetition, and a slower rate and a higher pitch than normal speech
Ageism Leading to Illness

Ageism impairs daily life.
Ageism prevents depressed older people from seeking help because they resign themselves to infirmity.
Destructive protection
Some younger adults and the media discourage the elderly from leaving home, thus contributing to ageism.
An Imagined Threat

Stereotype threat
Anxiety about the possibility that other people have prejudiced beliefs.
Responses to stereotype threat include dyeing hair, undergoing plastic surgery, dressing in youthful clothes, and moving quickly to look agile (or spry).
The Demographic Shift

World's aging population
United Nations estimates that nearly 8 percent of the world's population in 2010 was 65 or older, compared with only 2 percent a century earlier.
This number is expected to double by the year 2050.
The Demographic Shift

Three reasons for traditional pyramidal shape
Far more children were born than the replacement rate
Before modern sanitation and nutrition, about half of all children died before age 5
Middle-aged people rarely survived adult diseases like cancer and heart attacks
How about a square?
Demographic stacks in some industrialized nations are already does not have a pyramidal shape and is almost square.
Dependence and Independence

Dependency ratio
A calculation of the number of self-sufficient, productive adults compared with the number of dependents (children and the elderly) in a given population.
Current dependency ratio is about 2:1 in most industrialized nations (better than it has ever been).
Ratio could flip to 1:2 if baby-boomers live to 100 and the emerging adults are not be self-sufficient until age 25.
Young-Old, Old-Old, and Oldest-Old

Young-old
Healthy, vigorous, financially secure older adults (those aged 60 to 75) who are well integrated into the lives of their families and communities.
Old-old
Older adults (those aged 75 to 85) who suffer from physical, mental, or social deficits.
Oldest-old
Elderly adults (those over age 85) who are dependent on others for almost everything, requiring supportive services such as nursing-home care and hospital stays.
Caregivers or Care Receivers?

Older people probably give more care than they receive.
They are more likely than younger adults to vote, pray, participate in civic groups, and donate time and money to various causes and to their own descendants.
Only the oldest-old need ongoing care.
In the U.S. and Canada, only about 4% of the over-65 population are in nursing homes or hospitals.
A Short Time For Illness

Compression of morbidity
A shortening of the time a person spends ill or infirm before death; accomplished by postponing illness.
Due to improvements in lifestyle, medicine, and technological aids.
North Americans who live to be 95 are likely to be independent almost all of those years.
Ageism and the Aging Senses

Senescence is pervasive and inevitable.
Obvious in appearance (skin gets wrinkled, bodies change shape) and the senses.
Only 10% of people over age 65 see well without glasses.
Taste, smell, touch, and hearing are also impaired (e.g. by age 90, the average man in North America is almost deaf, hearing only 20 percent of what he once did).
Technology and Sensory Deficits

Technology can compensate for almost all sensory loss.
Visual problems
Brighter lights and bifocals or two pairs of glasses are needed.
Cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration can be avoided or mitigated if diagnosed early.
Elaborate visual aids (canes that sense when an object is near, infrared lenses, service animals, computers that "speak" written words) allow even the legally blind to be independent.
Through Different Eyes

Ageism and the Aging Senses

Auditory problems
Small and sensitive hearing aids are available but many people still hesitate to get aids.
Missing out on bits of conversation cuts down on communication and precipitates many other social losses.
Younger people tend to yell or use elderspeak, both of which are demeaning.
Elderly people are less vulnerable to stereotype threat if they have positive interactions with the younger generations.
The Society and Sensory Loss

A passive acceptance of sensory loss increases morbidity of all kinds.
Problems
It is often difficult to individualize available technology.
Ageism is inherent in the design of everything from airplane seats to shoes.
Many disabilities would disappear if the environment were better designed.
The Aging Brain

Brain slowdown
Senescence reduces production of neurotransmitters.
Neural fluid decreases, myelination thins, and cerebral blood circulates more slowly.
Speed is crucial for many aspects of cognition and may be the g.
Variation in Brain Efficiency

Efficiency
Brain senescence varies markedly from individual to individual.
The suggested reasons include gender, education, experience, and elders' assessment of whether their everyday activities are restricted by their health.
Brain Shrinkage

The hypothalamus (memory) and the prefrontal cortex (planning, inhibiting unwanted responses, and coordinating thoughts) shrink faster than some other brain areas.
Complicated relationship among past education, current mental exercise, and intellectual functioning in late adulthood.
Using More Parts of the Brain

Older adults use more parts of their brains to solve problems than younger adults.
Two possible explanations:
Selective compensation
"Brain de-differentiation"
Information Processing After Age 65

Input (Sensing)
Some information never reaches sensory memory in older people because the senses never detect the stimuli.
The brain automatically fills in missed sights and sounds.
Elderly people's underlying problem with sensory input may be in the brain, senses, or both.
Information Processing After Age 65

Storage (Memory)
Stereotype threat: If older people suspect their memories are fading, anxiety itself impairs memory.
Some aspects of memory remain strong throughout late adulthood while others do not.
Information Processing After Age 65

Working memory
Brain slowdown reduces working memory because older individuals take longer to perceive and process sensations.
Reduced working memory inhibits multitasking.
Information Processing After Age 65

Programming (Control processes)
Part of information-processing system that consists of methods for regulating the analysis and flow of information.
Useful control processes include memory and retrieval strategies, selective attention, and rules or strategies for problem solving.
Control processes become less effective with age.
Information Processing After Age 65

Ecological validity
Cognition should be measured in settings that are as realistic as possible.
Abilities measured should be those needed in real life.
Cognitive Output

Gradual output
Gradual decline in output of primary mental abilities is normal.
Two important modifiers
Health is a better predictor of cognition than age.
Training can improve cognitive ability, even for the very old.
Aging and Disease

Primary aging
Universal and irreversible physical changes that occur to all living creatures as they grow older.
Secondary aging
Specific physical illnesses or conditions that become more common with aging but result from poor health habits, genetic vulnerability, and other influences that vary from person to person.
More Years to Live

Compression of Morbidity

A shortening of the time a person spends ill or infirm, accomplished by postponing illness.

Cardiovascular Disease

Cardiovascular Health Study
Participants: More than 5,000 people over age 65 in the United States without coronary problems.
Six years later: Some participants had developed heart disease.
The likelihood of CVD was strongly related to six age-related risk factors.
Facts about CVD

Facts
CVD is considered secondary aging because not everyone develops it.
No single factor (including age, hypertension, inactivity, and smoking) makes CVD inevitable.
The links among aging, risk, and CVD are undeniable.
Staying Healthy

Nutrition
Aging body becomes less efficient at digesting food and using nutrients.
People need fewer calories as they grow older.
A healthful diet is very important for mind and body in late adulthood.
Some older people take drugs that affect nutrition
Many elders do not drink enough.
Staying Healthy

Exercise
Elders benefit from regular exercise.
Older people exercise less than younger adults do.
Movement of any kind is better than sitting still and regular exercise can compress morbidity.
Accommodation to disability may be needed.
Staying Healthy

Drug Use
Most people stop abusing drugs before middle age and active addicts rarely survive to old age.
Addiction
Alcohol
Dementia

Alzheimer Disease

Alzheimer disease (AD)
Most common cause of dementia
Characterized by gradual deterioration of memory and personality
Marked by the formation of plaques of beta-amyloid protein and tangles of tau protein in the brain
Also called senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT)
Alzheimer Disease

Genes involved in Alzheimer Disease
AD in middle age is rare, usually caused by genes (e.g., Down syndrome), and progresses quickly.
Most cases of AD begin much later and many genes have some impact (e.g., SORL1 and ApoE4).
Genetic tests for AD in late adulthood are rarely used before symptoms appear because they might evoke false fear or deceptive reassurance.
Stages of Alzheimer Disease

Beginning stages
Forgetfulness
Personality changes
Memory loss eventually becomes dangerous
Final stage
Full-time care is needed
Communication ceases
Identity and personality are lost
Death comes 10 to 15 years after the first signs appear
The Alzheimer Brain

The Impaired: Dementia

Dementia
Irreversible loss of intellectual functioning caused by organic brain damage or disease.
The DSM-5 now classifies dementias as major or mild neurocognitive disorders, but "dementia" remains in clinical use.
Dementia becomes more common with age, but it is abnormal and pathological even in the very old.
Mild cognitive impairment
Affects older adults with cognitive problems who are still able to function.
About half of them will become demented, but some stabilize with mild impairment and others regain their cognitive abilities.
Vascular Dementia

Vascular dementia (VaD)
Form of dementia characterized by sporadic, and progressive, loss of intellectual functioning
Caused by repeated infarcts, or temporary obstructions of blood vessels, which prevent sufficient blood from reaching the brain
Also called multi-infarct dementia
Other Dementias

Frontal lobe dementia
Form of dementia characterized by personality changes caused by deterioration of the frontal lobes and the amygdala
Also called frontotemporal lobar degeneration
Parkinson disease
Does not always lead to dementia
Starts with rigidity or tremor of the muscles as neurons that produce dopamine degenerate
Younger adults with Parkinson disease may avoid dementia for years; older people develop dementia sooner
Other Dementias

Lewy body dementia
Named after round deposits of protein (Lewy bodies) in the neuron
Numerous and dispersed throughout the brain
Motor movements and cognition are impacted
The main symptom is loss of inhibition
Prevention of Impairment

Regular physical exercise: Reduces the incidence of all forms of dementia by half.
Avoiding the pathogens that cause dementia: Testing beef for mad cow disease, using condoms to protect against AIDS, treating syphilis with antibiotics.
Treatment of Dementia

Treatment steps
Taking care of the overall health of the person
Getting a proper diagnosis
Starting appropriate treatment
Living a Long Life

Maximum life span
The oldest possible age to which members of a species can live, under ideal circumstances.
For humans, that age is approximately 122 years.
Average life expectancy
The number of years that the average person in a particular population is likely to live.
In the U.S. today, average life expectancy at birth is about 75 years for men and 81 years for women.
Dramatic variations from nation to nation.
Anti Aging

Calorie restriction
Practice of limiting dietary energy intake, while still consuming sufficient quantities of vitamins, minerals, and other important nutrients, for the purpose of improving health and slowing down the aging process.
Erikson and Maslow

Integrity
Final stage in Erikson's model in which older people gain interest in the arts, in children, and in human experience as a whole.
Self-actualization
Final stage in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, characterized by aesthetic, creative, philosophical, and spiritual understanding.
The Life Review

Life review
Examination of one's own part in life, which often takes the form of stories written or spoken by elderly people who want to share them with younger ones.
Wisdom

Wisdom
Expert knowledge system dealing with the conduct and understanding of life.
Life review, self-actualization, and integrity are considered parts of wisdom.
Some elderly people are unusually wise.
Photo Credits

Slide 14-Photodisc/Getty Images
Slide 39-Alfred Pasieka/Science Photo Library/ Photo Researchers

Ages and Stages

Erickson's stages
Erikson originally envisioned eight stages of development, which occur in sequence from birth through old age.
Three of his stages cover the years after adolescence.
Later in his life, Erikson stressed that stages and ages do not occur in lockstep.
Ages and Stages

Ages and Stages

Maslow's stages
Abraham Maslow (1954) described five stages, which occur in sequence.
Movement occurs when people have satisfied their needs at one level and are ready for the next step.
In his later years, Maslow reassessed his final level, self-actualization.
He suggested another level after that, called self-transcendence.
Ages and Stages

Ages and Stages

The social clock
Developmental timetable based not on biological maturation but on social norms
Set the stages of life and the behaviors considered appropriate to each of them
Some ages set by the social clock are enacted into law, in the form of minimal ages for driving, drinking, voting, getting married, signing a mortgage, and being entitled to retirement benefits
The Midlife Crisis

Crisis?
No current theorist sets chronological boundaries for specific stages of adult development.
Middle age, if it exists, can begin at age 35 or 50.
Midlife crisis
Time of anxiety and radical change as age 40 approaches
Men, in particular, were said to leave their wives, buy red sports cars, and quit their jobs because of midlife panic.
Ages and Stages

Personality throughout adulthood
Genes, parental practices, culture, and adult circumstances all contribute to personality.
Of these four, genes are probably the most influential, according to longitudinal studies.
Since genes do not change from conception through death, every study finds substantial continuity in personality.
Ages and Stages

The Big Five
Openness: Imaginative, curious, artistic, creative, open to new experiences
Conscientiousness: Organized, deliberate, conforming, self-disciplined
Extroversion: Outgoing, assertive, active
Agreeableness: Kind, helpful, easygoing, generous
Neuroticism: Anxious, moody, self-punishing, critical
Ages and Stages

Choosing a lifestyle
In adulthood, people choose their particular social context, or ecological niche.
Adults select vocations, mates, and neighborhoods, and they settle into chosen routines and surroundings.
Ages 30 to 50 are marked by more stability of personality than are other periods of life.
Ages and Stages

Ages and Stages

Gender differences in personality
Men are higher in extroversion and openness, women higher in conscientiousness and agreeableness.
These sex differences may be innate, perhaps related to hormones.
Gender convergence
Tendency for men and women become more similar as they move through middle age.
Intimacy

Intimacy
Intimacy needs are lifelong.
Adults meet their need for social connection through their relationships with relatives, friends, coworkers, and romantic partners.
Social convoy
Collectively, the family members, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers who move through life with an individual.
Friends

Friends
Are typically the most crucial members of the social convoy
Often are able to provide practical help and useful advice when serious problems—death of a family member, personal illness, loss of a job—arise
Family Bonds

Family bonds
When family bonds are similar to friendship bonds, relatives are mainstays of the social convoy.
Physical separation does not necessarily weaken family ties.
Family Bonds

Family bonds: Parents and adult children
Relationships between parents and adult children are more likely to deteriorate if they live together.
Over the years of adulthood, parents and adult children typically increase in closeness, forgiveness, and pride as both generations gain maturity.
Family Bonds

Familism
Belief that family members should support one another, sacrificing individual freedom and success, if necessary, in order to preserve family unity.
Family Bonds

Family bonds: Siblings
Adult siblings also often become mutually supportive in adulthood.
Adult siblings help one another cope with children, marriage, and elderly relatives.
Sibling bonds are particularly likely to develop during adulthood among children who grew up in large families with major stressors like extreme poverty or a bitter divorce.
Family Bonds

Family closeness can sometimes be destructive.
Some adults wisely keep their distance from their blood relatives.
They may instead become fictive kin in another family, that is, someone who is accepted and treated like a family member.
Family Bonds

Committed Partners

Adults everywhere seek committed sexual partnerships.
Partners help meet their needs for intimacy as well as to raise children, share resources, and provide care when needed.
Less than 15% of U.S. residents marry before age 25, but by age 40, 85% have married.
Married people are a little happier, healthier, and richer than never-married ones—but not by much.
Committed Partners

Empty nest
Contrary to outdated impressions, this time often improves a relationship.
Most long-married people stay together because they love and trust each other, not simply because they are stuck.
Committed Partners

Divorce

Adults are affected by divorce in ways they never anticipated.
Very distressed marriages = happier after divorce; distant marriages =less happy than they thought they would be.
Divorce reduces income, severs friendships, and weakens family ties.
Divorce

Divorce

Consequences of divorce
Last for decades
Impacts income, family welfare, and self esteem
Involves almost one out of two marriages in the U.S.
Generativity

Erikson
After the stage of intimacy versus isolation comes generativity versus stagnation, when adults seek to be productive in a caring way.
Adults satisfy their need to be generative in many ways, including creativity, caregiving, and employment.
Caregiving

Chief form of generativity is establishing and guiding the next generation.
Every parent is tested and transformed by the dynamic experience of raising children.
Caregiving

All kinds of caregivers
Roughly one-third of all North American adults become stepparents, adoptive parents, or foster parents.
Many adopted or foster children remain attached to their birth parents, part of the normal human affection for familiar caregivers.
If children are not attached to anyone (as can happen when they spend years in an institution), they are mistrustful of all adults and fearful of becoming too dependent.
Caregiving

Stepfamilies
Average age of new stepchildren is 9 years, which means that usually they are strongly connected to their biological parents.
This helps the child but hinders the stepparents.
Young stepchildren often get hurt, sick, lost, or disruptive, and teenage stepchildren may get pregnant, drunk, or arrested.
Generativity, with patient, authoritative parenting, is needed.
Caregiving

Adoption
Adoptive parents have several advantages: they are legally connected to their children for life, the biological parents are usually absent, and they desperately wanted the child.
Strong bonds can develop, especially when the children are adopted as infants.
During adolescence, these bonds may stretch and loosen as some adoptive children become intensely rebellious.
Caregiving

Caring for parents
Fewer adults are available to care for elderly family members and there are more older adults.
Siblings' relationships can be strained if a parent becomes frail and needs care.
One sibling usually becomes the chief caregiver.
Caregiving

Sandwich generation
Generation of middle-aged people who are supposedly "squeezed" by the needs of the younger and older members of their families.
Some adults do feel pressured by these obligations, but most are not burdened by them.
Employment

Other major avenue for generativity
Adults have many psychosocial needs that employment can fulfill.
Unemployment is associated with higher rates of child abuse, alcoholism, depression, and many other social problems.
Even though average income has doubled, overall happiness within the U.S. has not risen in the past 50 years.
Employment

Relative deprivation
People compare themselves to others in their group and are satisfied if they are no worse off than the group norm.
Employment

Work meets generativity needs by allowing people to complete many tasks.
Develop and use their personal skills
Express their creative energy
Aid and advise coworkers, as a mentor or friend
Support the education and health of their families
Contribute to the community by providing goods or services
Employment

Extrinsic rewards of work
Tangible benefits, usually in the form of compensation (e.g., salary, health insurance, pension), that one receives for doing a job.
Intrinsic rewards of work
Intangible gratifications (e.g., job satisfaction, self-esteem, pride) that come from within oneself as a result of doing a job.
Employment

Diversity in the workplace
Diversity in employees' backgrounds presents a challenge for employers as well as for workers.
Not everyone has the same expectations, needs, and desires.
Mentor
A skilled and knowledgeable person who advises or guides an inexperienced person.
Diversity at Work

Employment

Recent labor market changes
Increased frequency of hiring and firing
Between ages 25 and 42, the average worker in the United States has five separate employers.
Older workers find job changes particularly difficult.
Employment

Another recent change in employment patterns
Proliferation of work schedules beyond the traditional 9-to-5, Monday-through-Friday.
Flextime
Arrangement in which work schedules are flexible so that employees can balance personal and occupational responsibilities.
Work Schedules

Employment

Telecommuting
About one-third of all working couples who have young children and nonstandard schedules save on child care by having one parent at home while the other is at work.

The Experience of Aging

Senescence
Gradual physical decline that is related to aging and during which the body becomes less strong and efficient
Not Old Yet

The Experience of Aging

Organ reserve
Extra capacity built into each organ, such as the heart and lungs, and allows a person to cope with extraordinary demands or to withstand organ strain.
The Experience of Aging

Homeostasis
Adjustment of all the body's systems to keep physiological functions in a state of equilibrium, moment by moment.
Allostasis
Dynamic body adjustment, related to homeostasis, that over time affects overall physiology.
Sex and Fertility

Sexual responsiveness
Sexual arousal occurs more slowly with age, and orgasm takes longer.
Distress at slower responsiveness is more associated with anxiety, interpersonal relationships, and expectations than with aging.
Study findings
Adults of all ages enjoy "very high levels of emotional satisfaction and physical pleasure from sex within their relationships."
Men and women were most likely to be "extremely satisfied" with sex if they were in a committed, monogamous relationship.
Infertility

Infertility is most common in nations where medical care is scarce and STIs are common.
United States: 15% of all couples are infertile, partly because many postpone childbearing.
When couples in their 40s try to conceive, about half are infertile and the other half risk various complications.
Causes of Infertility

Male fertility
Multiple factors (e.g. advanced age, fever, radiation, prescription drugs, stress, environmental toxins, drug abuse, alcoholism, cigarette smoking) can reduce sperm number, shape, and motility.
Female fertility
Affected by anything that impairs physical functioning (e.g. advanced age, diseases, smoking, extreme dieting, obesity).
Pelvic inflammatory disease can block a woman's fallopian tubes, preventing the sperm from reaching an ovum.
Fertility Restored

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART)
Advances in medicine have solved about half of all fertility problems.
ART overcomes obstacles such as a low sperm count and blocked fallopian tubes.
In vitro fertilization (IVF)
A technique in which ova (egg cells) are surgically removed from a woman and fertilized with sperm in a laboratory.
After the original fertilized cells (the zygotes) have divided several times, they are inserted into the woman's uterus
The Aging Brain

Difficulty with multitasking
Reactions take longer and complex memory tasks become impossible because of age-related brain changes.
Multitasking becomes more difficult with every passing decade (e.g. driving while talking on a cell phone).
Distractions (e.g. noisy conversations, emotional stress) become more difficult to ignore.
The Aging Brain

Several lifestyle factors make brain loss more common
Drug abuse: Alcohol, cigarettes, and psychoactive drugs (including prescription pain relievers) can severely damage the brain
Excessive stress: May lead to depression, an overactive immune system, and harm to the brain
The Aging Brain

Lifestyle factors
Poor circulation: Everything that protects the circulatory system (e.g., exercise, a healthy diet, and low blood pressure) also protects the brain.
Viruses: Some viruses and infections cross the blood-brain barrier and harm the brain (e.g., HIV and the prion that causes mad cow disease).
Important: Past education, current intellectual activity, exercise, and overall health all promote brain function!
The Aging Process: Physical Appearance

Skin
Skin becomes dryer and rougher.
Collagen decreases by about 1 percent every year after age
Skin becomes thinner and less flexible; the cells just beneath the surface are more variable; wrinkles appear, particularly around the eyes.
Hair
Begins to turn gray and thin
Menopause and HRT

Menopause
Time in middle age (around age 50) when a woman's menstrual periods cease completely and the production of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone drops considerably.
Menopause is dated to one year after a woman's last menstrual period.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT)
Treatment to compensate for hormone reduction at menopause or following surgical removal of the ovaries.
Such treatment, which usually involves estrogen and progesterone, minimizes menopausal symptoms and diminishes the risk of osteoporosis in later adulthood.
HRT may involve health risks.
Andropause

Andropause (male menopause)
A term coined to signify a drop in testosterone levels in older men, which normally results in a reduction in sexual desire, erections, and muscle mass.
Effectiveness of HRT are questionable.
Sense Organs

Vision
Peripheral vision: Narrows faster than frontal vision
Color vision: Shifts from vivid to faded more quickly than does black and white
Nearsightedness: Increases gradually beginning in one's 20s
Farsightedness: Lens of the eye less elastic and cornea flattens by middle age
Hearing
Rarely problematic before age 65
High-frequency sounds become less audible sooner.
Measuring Health

Mortality
Death: Mortality usually refers to the number of deaths each year per 1,000 members of a given population.
Morbidity
Disease: Morbidity refers to the rate of diseases of all kinds—physical and emotional, acute (sudden), chronic (ongoing), and fatal—in a given population.
Measuring Health

Disability
Long-term difficulty in performing normal activities of daily life because of some physical, emotional, or mental condition.
Vitality
A measure of health that refers to how healthy and energetic—physically, emotionally, and socially—an individual actually feels.
Health Habits and Age: Tobacco

Tobacco
Notable declines in cigarette smoking in the United States over the past 50 years.
Worldwide trends are less encouraging.
Variations among nations, cohorts, and the sexes indicate that smoking is affected by social norms, laws, and advertising.
Health Habits and Age: Tobacco

Health Habits and Age: Alcohol

Drinking in moderation
Drinking in moderation (no more than two drinks a day) increases life expectancy.
Alcohol reduces coronary heart disease and strokes.
Increases "good" cholesterol and reduces "bad" cholesterol.
Lowers blood pressure.
Health Habits and Age: Alcohol

Heavy drinking
Increases the risk of violent death and is implicated in 60 diseases.
Stark international variations in alcohol abuse.
Binge drinking signals a problem: About 20% of U.S. adults had five or more drinks on a single occasion in the past year.
Disproportionate burden of harm in poorer countries because prevention and treatment strategies have not been fully established.
Health Habits and Age

Overeating
Many adults choose high-calorie, low-nutrient foods.
Only 27% of U.S. adults eat three daily servings of vegetables.
Too many high-calorie foods combined with too little activity leads to obesity.
Excess weight increases the risk of every chronic disease (e.g., diabetes).
Health Habits and Age

United States facts
Highest rates of obesity and diabetes
66% of U.S. adults are overweight; of those, 33% are obese and 5% are morbidly obese
Metabolism decreases by one-third between ages 20 and 60.
Genetics: Two alleles correlate with both diabetes and weight
Increase in obesity rates cannot be blamed on genes cultural influences are more important!
Health Habits and Age

Inactivity
Regular physical activity at every stage of life protects against serious illness.
Sitting for long hours correlates with almost every unhealthy condition.
Even a little movement helps but more intense exercise (e.g. swimming, jogging, bicycling) is ideal.
The connection between exercise and health is causal: People who are more fit are likely to resist disease and to feel healthier as they age.
Older and Lazier

Health Habits and Age

Factors that prevent a decline in exercise
Friendship: People exercise more if their friends do.
Communities: Adults exercise more in neighborhoods with walking and biking paths, ample fields and parks, and subsidized pools and gyms.
Coping with Stress

Stressor
Any situation, event, experience, or other stimulus that causes a person to feel stressed.
Allostatic load
Total, combined burden of stress and disease that an individual must cope with.
Coping with Stress

Stressors
Some stressors, such as serious illness or unexpected job loss, are major.
Others are minor, but ongoing hassles, such as traffic on the daily commute or the added work of raising twins.
Physiological reactions take a toll, and past stressors make it more likely that a new stressor will have an impact.
Coping with Stress

Problem-focused coping
Strategy often used by younger adults to deal with stress in which they tackle a stressful issue directly.
Emotion-focused coping
Strategy often used by older adults to deal with stress in which they change their feelings about the stressor rather than changing the stressor itself.
Coping with Stress

Gender and social support
Gender affects how a person responds to stress and thus affects allostatic load.
Virtually every study finds that social support is crucial in reducing allostatic load.
Variations in Health

Socioeconomic status and health
Well-educated, financially secure adults live longer
Suspected reasons
Education teaches healthy habits.
Education leads to higher income, which allows better housing and medical care.
Education may be a marker for intelligence, which is a protective factor.
Culture and Health

Research on Age and Intelligence

General intelligence (g)
Construct based on the idea that intelligence is one basic trait that involves all cognitive abilities, which people possess in varying amounts.
Cannot be measured directly but be inferred from various abilities (e.g. vocabulary, memory, and reasoning)
Many scientists are trying to find one common factor (genes, early brain development, or some specific aspect of health) underlies IQ.
Research on Age and Intelligence

Cross-sectional research
U.S. Army: Tested the aptitude of all literate draftees during World War I.
Intellectual ability peaked at about age 18, stayed at that level until the mid-20s, and then began to decline.
Classic study of 1,191 individuals, aged 10 to 60, from 19 New England villages.
IQ scores peaked between ages 18 and 21 and then gradually fell, with the average 55-year-old scoring the same as the average 14-year old.
Research on Age and Intelligence

Longitudinal research
Longitudinal data found many intellectual gains through adulthood but younger cohorts often better than older cohorts.
Probably due to changes in the environment (more education, improved nutrition, smaller family size, fewer infections) and NOT changes in innate intelligence!
Longitudinal research is better than cross-sectional research but also has problems (e.g. practice effects, high attrition rates).
The Flynn Effect

The Flynn Effect
The rise in average IQ scores that has occurred over the decades in many nations.
It is unfair—and scientifically invalid—to compare IQ scores of a cross section of adults of various ages.
Older adults will score lower, but that does not mean they have lost intellectual power.
Research on Age and Intelligence

Cross-sequential research
Combines both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs
Seattle Longitudinal Study
Cross-sequential study of adult intelligence
Schaie began this study in 1956; the most recent testing was conducted in 2005.
500 adults, aged 20 to 50, were tested on five primary mental abilities.
New cohort was added and followed every 7 years.
Research on Age and Intelligence

Measures in the Seattle Longitudinal Study
Verbal meaning (comprehension)
Spatial orientation
Inductive reasoning
Number ability
Word fluency (rapid associations)
Findings
People improve in most mental abilities during adulthood and decline occurs later in life.
Each particular ability has a distinct pattern for each gender.
Research on Age and Intelligence

Components of Intelligence

Cattell's research
Fluid intelligence
Those types of basic intelligence that make learning of all sorts quick and thorough.
Abilities such as working memory, abstract thought, and speed of thinking are usually considered aspects of fluid intelligence.
Crystallized intelligence
Those types of intellectual ability that reflect accumulated learning.
Vocabulary and general information are examples.
Components of Intelligence

Sternberg's components
Analytic intelligence
Is valuable in high school and college, as students are expected to remember and analyze various ideas.
Creative intelligence
Allows people to find a better match to their skills, values, or desires.
Practical intelligence
Is useful as people age and need to manage their daily lives.
Components of Intelligence

Cultural variations (Gardner)
Nine types of intelligence
Each culture stresses a different set of Gardner's nine types of intelligence.
Everyone has all types to some extent, but each person develops only some of them.
Selective Gains and Losses

Selective optimization with compensation
People try to maintain a balance in their lives by looking for the best way to compensate for physical and cognitive losses and to become more proficient in activities they can already do well (Paul and Margaret Baltes, 1990).
Expertise

Selective expert
Someone who is notably more skilled and knowledgeable than the average person about whichever activities are personally meaningful
Expertise
Culture and context guide expertise.
Experts are more skilled, proficient, and knowledgeable at a particular task than the average person, especially a novice (literally, "a new person") who has not practiced that skill.
Experts do not necessarily have extraordinary intellectual ability.
Characteristics of Expert Thought

Expertise is intuitive
Experts rely on their past experiences and on immediate contexts and their actions are more intuitive and less stereotypic.
Novices follow formal procedures and rules.
Expertise is automatic
Experts process incoming information more quickly and analyze it more efficiently than non-experts; then they act in well-rehearsed ways that appear unconscious.
Characteristics of Expert Thought

Expertise is strategic
Experts have more and better strategies, especially when problems are unexpected.
Expertise is flexible
Experts are creative and curious, deliberately experimenting and enjoying the challenge when things do not go according to plan.

Biosocial Development

Emerging adulthood
The period between the ages of 18 and 25, which is now widely thought of as a separate developmental stage.
Also called young adulthood or youth.
Biosocial Development

Strong and active bodies
Emerging adults are usually in good health.
Traditionally, the years between ages 18 and 25 were a time for hard physical work and childbearing.
Physical work and parenthood are no longer expected of every young adult in the twenty-first century.
Biosocial Development

Growth
The current level of food availability means that in almost every nation, emerging adults have reached full height (girls usually by age 16, boys by age 18).
For both sexes, muscle growth and fat accumulation continue into the early 20s, when women attain adult breast and hip size and men reach full shoulder width and upper-arm strength.
Biosocial Development

Immune system and disease
By age 20, the immune system has developed well enough to fight off everything from the sniffles to cancer.
Usually, blood pressure is normal, teeth develop no new cavities, heart rate is steady, the brain is fully grown, and lung capacity is as large as it will ever be.
Death from disease almost never occurs during emerging adulthood.
Biosocial Development

Fertility: Then and Now

Sex and reproduction
The sexual-reproductive system is especially vigorous during emerging adulthood.
The sex drive is powerful, infertility is rare, orgasm is frequent, and birth is easy, with fewer complications in the early 20s than at any other time.
Sexual-reproductive characteristics are produced by sex hormones, which peak in both sexes at about age 20.
Fertility: Then and Now

Pregnancy and contraception
With frequent intercourse and without contraception, the average woman in her early 20s becomes pregnant within three months.
Globalization, advanced technology, and modern medicine have combined to produce effective contraception, available in almost every nation.
As fewer infants die, people no longer need to begin childbearing before age 20 or to have four or more children simply to ensure that some of their children will survive.
Fertility: Then and Now

Pregnancy and contraception
Advances in contraception have not only reduced the birth rate; they have also increased the rate of sexual activity, especially among unmarried adults.
Globally, emerging adults have fewer babies but engage in more sexual activity than older adults (married or not) do or than people their own age once did.
Taking Risks

Risks
Half of all emerging adults in the United States have had at least one sexually transmitted infection (STI).
Emerging adulthood is marked by a greater willingness to take risks of all sorts, not just sexual ones.
Young adults enjoy danger, drive without seat belts, carry guns, try addictive drugs.
Taking Risks

Extreme sports
Forms of recreation that include apparent risk of injury or death and that are attractive and thrilling as a result
Send Them Home

Taking Risks

Drug abuse
Ingestion of a drug to the extent that it impairs the user's biological or psychological well-being.
Drug addiction
Condition of drug dependence in which the absence of the given drug from the individual's system produces a drive—physiological, biological, or both—to ingest more of the drug
Too Old for That

Taking Risks

More risks
Drug abuse is particularly common among those who die violently.
In the U.S., between the ages of 15 and 25, almost 1 male in every 100 dies violently, through suicide, homicide, or a motor-vehicle accident.
About 4 times as many young men as young women commit suicide or die in motor-vehicle accidents, and 6 times as many are murdered.
Cognitive Development

Informed by experience
Labouvie-Vief investigated age differences in the way people described themselves.
Self-description categories
Self-protective (high in self-involvement, low in self-doubt)
Dysregulated (fragmented, overwhelmed by emotions or problems)
Complex (valuing openness and independence above all)
Integrated (able to regulate emotions and logic)
Cognitive Development

Postformal thought
Proposed adult stage of cognitive development, following Piaget's four stages.
Postformal thought goes beyond adolescent thinking by being more practical, more flexible, and more dialectical.
Really a Stage?

No one under age 20 had reached the advanced "integrated" stage, but some adults of every age had.
The largest shift in self-description toward higher levels occurred between adolescence and emerging adulthood.
Combining Emotions and Logic

Postformal thinkers
Use formal analysis to learn science, distill principles, develop arguments, and resolve the world's problems
Are less impulsive than adolescents
Do not wait for someone to present a problem to solve or for circumstances to require a reaction
More Purple Means More Planning

Cognitive Development

Stereotype threat
Fear that someone else will judge one's appearance or behavior negatively and thereby confirm that person's prejudiced attitudes
Mere possibility of being negatively stereotyped arouses anxiety that can disrupt cognition and distort emotional regulation
Stereotype threat makes people of all ages doubt their ability, which reduces learning if their anxiety interferes with cognition
The Effects of College

Cognitive growth and higher education
Most contemporary students attend college primarily to secure their vocational and financial future.
College also correlates with better health. College graduates everywhere smoke less, eat better, exercise more, and live longer.
There is no doubt that tertiary education improves verbal and quantitative abilities, knowledge of specific subject areas, skills in various professions, reasoning, and reflection.
The Effects of College

Massification
Idea that establishing higher learning institutions and encouraging college enrollment could benefit everyone (the masses), leading to marked increases in the number of emerging adults in college.
Personality Patterns

Continuity and change
Psychological research on personality traits of twins from ages 17 to 24 finds both genetic continuity and developmental improvements.
Emerging adults are open to new experiences.
The trend is toward less depression and more joy, along with more insight into the self.
College and Cognition

The Effects of Diversity

Ethnic, economic, religious, and cultural diversity
Discussion among people of different backgrounds, ages, and experiences leads to intellectual challenge and deeper thought.
Those who are most likely to be postformal thinkers are also those with the most friends from other backgrounds (Galupo et al., 2010).
All Kinds of People

Psychosocial Development

Identity achieved
The search for identity still begins at puberty, but it continues much longer.
Most emerging adults are still seeking to determine who they are.
Erikson believed that, at each stage, the outcome of earlier crises provides the foundation of each new era.
Psychosocial Development

Psychosocial Development

Ethnic identity
About half of the 18- to 25-year-olds identify with very specific ethnic groups.
More than any other age group, emerging adults have friends with diverse backgrounds.
Ethnic identity may affect choices in language, manners, romance, employment, neighborhood, religion, clothing, and values.
Psychosocial Development

Vocational identity
Establishing a vocational identity is considered part of growing up.
Emerging adulthood is a "critical stage for the acquisition of resources"— including the education, skills, and experience needed for family and career success.
Happy at Work

Personality in Emerging Adulthood

Continuity and change
Psychological research on personality traits of twins from ages 17 to 24 finds both genetic continuity and developmental improvements.
Emerging adults are open to new experiences.
Trend is toward less depression and more joy, along with more insight into the self.
Personality in Emerging Adulthood

Rising self-esteem
Psychological research finds both continuity and improvement in attitudes.
Positive trend of increasing happiness has become more evident over recent decades, perhaps because young adults are more likely to make their own life decisions (Twenge et al., 2008).
Personality in Emerging Adulthood

Mental health and illness
Stresses and transitions of emerging adulthood might be thought to reduce self-esteem, but the research seems to say otherwise.
Dealing with transitions successfully—especially leaving home, achieving identity, attending and then graduating from college, and securing a full-time job—correlates with well-being.
Personality Patterns

Psychopathology
Each particular psychopathology has a developmental trajectory and becomes more common at certain ages than at others.
In addition to substance use disorders, specific other problems—including mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia—are more likely to appear in emerging adulthood.
Plasticity

Personality
Personality is not fixed by age 5, or 15, or 20, as it was once thought to be.
Emerging adults are open to experiences, which allows personality shifts and eagerness for more education.
Intimacy

Intimacy
Erikson's sixth psychosocial stage, intimacy versus isolation, particularly emphasizes that humans are social creatures.
Intimacy progresses from attraction to close connection to ongoing commitment.
Marriage and parenthood, as emerging adults are discovering, are only two of several paths to intimacy.
Intimacy

Romantic partners
Most emerging adults are postponing, not abandoning, marriage.
"Hooking up" and "friends with benefits" are becoming more common.
Love and Ethnicity

Interethnic marriage
In 2008, 15 percent of all U.S. marriages were officially counted as interethnic.
Although emerging adults do not usually exclude relationships with people of other ethnicities, their neighborhoods, religious institutions, and colleges make it more likely they will meet others of similar backgrounds.
Finding Each Other

Social network and dating sites
Choice overload
Having so many options makes a thoughtful choice difficult.
Regret after making a choice is more likely.
Identity and Intimacy

Cohabitation
Living with an unrelated person—typically a romantic partner—to whom one is not married.
Most young adults in the United States, England, and northern Europe cohabit rather than marry before age 25.
More Together, Fewer Married

Family Forces

Family
Emerging adults are supposedly independent, leaving their childhood home and parents behind.
Parents continue to be crucial influences after age 18—more so now than in the past.
Fewer emerging adults today have established their own families, secured high-paying jobs, or achieved a definitive understanding of their identity and goals.
National Differences

Living with parents
Happiness of emerging adults living with parents depends upon economy and culture.
Almost all unmarried young adults in Italy and Japan remain in their childhood home.
Fewer emerging adults live with parents in the U.S. if separate households are affordable.
No More House Rules?

Photo Credits

Slide 20-Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: NATURE NEUROCIENCE, Elizabeth R. Sowell, et. al; In vivo evidence for post-adolescent brain maturation in frontal and striatal regions, 2:10, Fig. 1b. copyright 1999.

Identity

Identity versus role confusion
Erikson's term for the fifth stage of development, in which the person tries to figure out "Who am I?" but is confused as to which of many possible roles to adopt.
Identity
Consistent definition of one's self as a unique individual, in terms of roles, attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations
Identity achievement
Erikson's term for the attainment of identity, or the point at which a person understands who he or she is as a unique individual, in accord with past experiences and future plans
Not Yet Achieved

Role confusion (identity diffusion)
Situation in which an adolescent does not seem to know or care what his or her identity is
Foreclosure
Erikson's term for premature identity formation, which occurs when an adolescent adopts parents' or society's roles and values wholesale, without questioning or analysis
Moratorium
An adolescent's choice of a socially acceptable way to postpone making identity-achievement decisions. Going to college is a common example
Four Areas of Identity Achievement

Religious Identity
Gender Identity
Political/Ethnic Identity
Vocational identity
Relationships with Elders and Peers

Conflicts with parents
Parent-adolescent conflict typically peaks in early adolescence and is more a sign of attachment than of distance
.
Bickering
Bickering involves petty, peevish arguing, usually repeated and ongoing
Neglect
Although teenagers may act as if they no longer need their parents, neglect can be very destructive.
Relationships with Elders and Peers

Closeness within the family
Communication: Do parents and teens talk openly with one another?
Support: Do they rely on one another?
Connectedness: How emotionally close are they?
Control: Do parents encourage or limit adolescent autonomy?
Relationships with Elders and Peers

Emotional dependency
Adolescents are more dependent on their parents if they are female and/or from a minority ethnic group.
This can be either repressive or healthy, depending on the culture and the specific circumstances.
Relationships with Elders and Peers

Do You Know Where Your Teenager Is?
Parental monitoring: Parents' ongoing awareness of what their children are doing, where, and with whom.
Positive: Part of a warm, supportive relationship
Negative: When overly restrictive and controlling
Worst: Psychological in which parents make a child feel guilty and impose gratefulness by threatening to withdraw love and support
Cliques and Crowds

Clique
Group of adolescents made up of close friends who are loyal to one another while excluding outsiders.
Crowd
Larger group of adolescents who have something in common but who are not necessarily friends.
Choosing Friends

Peer pressure
Encouragement to conform to one's friends or contemporaries in behavior, dress, and attitude
Usually considered a negative force, as when adolescent peers encourage one another to defy adult authority
Selection
Teenagers select friends whose values and interests they share, abandoning friends who follow other paths.
Peer Support

Facilitation
Peers facilitate both destructive and constructive behaviors in one another.
Makes it easier to do both the wrong thing ("Let's all skip school") and the right thing ("Let's study together")
Helps individuals do things that they would be unlikely to do on their own
Deviancy training
Destructive peer support in which one person shows another how to rebel against authority or social norms
From Asexual to Active

Sequence of male-female relationships during childhood and adolescence
Groups of friends, exclusively one sex or the other
A loose association of girls and boys, with public interactions within a crowd
Small mixed-sex groups of the advanced members of the crowd
Formation of couples, with private intimacies
Romance: Straight and Gay

Straight
First romances appear in high school and rarely last more than a year.
Girls claim a steady partner more often than boys do.
Breakups and unreciprocated crushes are common.
Adolescents are crushed by rejection and sometimes contemplate revenge or suicide.
Romance: Straight and Gay

Gay
Many do not acknowledge their sexual orientation.
National and peer cultures often make the homosexual young person feel ashamed.
Many gay youth date members of the other sex to hide their true orientation.
Past cohorts of gay youth had higher rates of clinical depression, drug abuse, and suicide than did their heterosexual peers.
True number of homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual youth is unknown.
Sex Education

Learning from peers
Adolescent sexual behavior is strongly influenced by peers.
Specifics of peer education depend on the group: All members of a clique may be virgins, or all may be sexually active.
"Virginity pledge" in church-based crowds. If a group considers itself a select minority, then virginity.
Only about half of U.S. adolescent couples discuss issues such as pregnancy and STIs and many are unable to come to a shared conclusion based on accurate information.
Sex Education

Learning from parents
Parents often underestimate their adolescent's need for information.
Many parents know little about their adolescents' sexual activity and wait to talk about sex until their child is already in a romantic relationship.
Gender and age are the most significant correlates of parent-child conversations.
Sex Education

Parents tend to underestimate adolescents' capacity to engage in responsible sex.
Proper condom use is higher among adolescents than among adults.
Parental example may be more important than conversation.
Sex Education: In School

Abstinence-Only Programs
1998: U.S. government decided to spend about $1 billion over 10 years to promote abstinence-only sex education in public schools.
Goal: To prevent teen pregnancy and STIs by waiting until marriage before becoming sexually active.
Assessment: No information about other methods of avoiding pregnancy and infection was provided. Abstinence-only curriculum had little effect
Sex Education

Starting early: The most effective programs
Begin before high school
Include assignments that require parent-child communication
Focus on behavior (not just on conveying information)
Provide medical referrals on request
Last for years
Important: Some school programs make a difference!
Sexual Behavior

Selected examples
In 2007, more than half of all U.S. teenagers had had sexual intercourse by age 16.
The rate of teenage pregnancy in the United States has declined dramatically since 1960.
86% of new teenage mothers are unmarried.
About 20% of teenage couples use the pill and condoms, to prevent both pregnancy and infection.
Sexual Behavior

Sadness and Anger

Depression
Self-esteem for boys and girls dips at puberty
Signs of depression are common
2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of ninth- to twelfth-graders:
36% of girls and 21% of boys experienced depressed symptoms within the past year
Clinical depression
Feelings of hopelessness, lethargy, and worthlessness that last two weeks or more
Sadness and Anger

Gender differences
20% of female and 10% of male teenagers experience clinical depression.
Cause for the gender disparity may be biological, psychological, or social.
Cognitive explanation: Rumination
Repeatedly thinking and talking about past experiences; can contribute to depression and is more common in girls
Suicide

Suicidal ideation
Thinking about suicide, usually with some serious emotional and intellectual or cognitive overtones
Adolescent suicidal ideation is common, completed suicides are not.
Adolescents are less likely to kill themselves than adults are.
Suicide

Misconceptions about adolescent suicide rates
The suicide rate for adolescents, low as it is, is higher than it was in the early 1960.
Statistics on "youth" often include emerging adults, whose suicide rates are higher than those of adolescents.
Adolescent suicides capture media attention.
Suicide attempts are relatively common in adolescence.
Suicide

Suicide

Cluster suicides
Several suicides committed by members of a group within a brief period of time
Parasuicide
Any potentially lethal action against the self that does not result in death
Parasuicide is common, completed suicide is not.
Suicide

Completed suicide: Four factors increase risk
Availability of guns
Use of alcohol and other drugs
Lack of parental supervision
A culture that condones suicide
Suicide

Gender differences in suicide
Suicide rate among male teenagers in the U.S. is four times higher than the rate for female teenagers.
Reasons for this difference
Availability of lethal means
Male culture that shames those who attempt suicide but fail
Methods
Males tend to shoot themselves; females swallow pills or hang themselves
Girls tend to let their friends and families know that they are depressed, but boys do not.
Anger and Aggression

Anger
Increased anger during puberty is normal but most adolescents express their anger in acceptable ways.
Aggression
Steady aggression throughout childhood and adolescence (7%) is warning sign.
Anger and Aggression

Juvenile delinquent
Person under the age of 18 who breaks the law
Life-course-persistent offender
A person whose criminal activity typically begins in early adolescence and continues throughout life; a career criminal
Adolescence-limited offender
Person whose criminal activity stops by age 21
Drug Use and Abuse

Variations in drug use
Age differences
Drug use becomes widespread from age 10 to 25 and then decreases
Drug use before age 18 is the best predictor of later drug use
National differences
Nations have markedly different rates of adolescent drug use, even nations with common boundaries.
These variations are partly due to differing laws the world over.
Drug Use and Abuse

Cohort differences
Drug use among adolescents has decreased in the U.S. since 1976.
Adolescent culture may have a greater effect on drug-taking behavior than laws do.
Most adolescents in the U.S. have experimented with drug use and say that they could find illegal drugs if they tried.
Most U.S. adolescents are not regular drug users and about 20% never use any drugs.
Rates vary from state to state.
Drug Use and Abuse

Drug Use and Abuse

Gender differences in drug use
Adolescent boys generally use more drugs and use them more often.
Gender differences are reinforced by social constructions about proper male and female behavior (e.g., "If I don't smoke, I'm not a real man").
Harm from Drugs

Tobacco
Slows down growth (impairs digestion, nutrition, and appetite)
Reduces the appetite
Causes protein and vitamin deficiencies caused
Can damage developing hearts, lungs, brains, and reproductive systems
Harm from Drugs

Alcohol
Most frequently abused drug among North American teenagers
Heavy drinking may permanently impair memory and self-control by damaging the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.
Alcohol allows momentary denial of problems when problems get worse because they have been ignored, more alcohol is needed.
Denial can have serious consequences.
Harm from Drugs

Marijuana
Adolescents who regularly smoke marijuana are more likely to drop out of school, become teenage parents, and be unemployed.
Marijuana affects memory, language proficiency, and motivation.
Harm from Drugs

Occasional use of any drug
Drug use is progressive and the first use usually occurs as part of a social gathering.
Few adolescent drug users are addicts but occasional drug use can lead to addiction.
The younger a person is when beginning drug use, the more likely addiction will occur.
Occasional drug use excites the limbic system and interferes with the prefrontal cortex drug users are more emotional and less reflective.
Preventing Drug Abuse: What Works?

Generational forgetting
The idea that each new generation forgets what the previous generation learned. As used here, the term refers to knowledge about the harm drugs can do.
Project DARE
Drug Abuse Resistance Education
Features adults (usually police officers) telling
students about the dangers of drugs
DARE has no impact on later drug use
Preventing Drug Abuse: What Works?

Scare tactics: May increase drug use because
The advertisements make drugs seem exciting.
Adolescents recognize the exaggeration.
The ads give some teenagers ideas about ways to show defiance.
Advertising campaigns against teen smoking
Antismoking announcements produced by cigarette companies increase use
Preventing Drug Abuse: What Works?

Important!
Prevention and moderation of adolescent drug use and abuse are possible.
Antidrug programs and messages need to be carefully designed to avoid a backlash or generational forgetting.

Adolescence

Period that was once considered late adolescence (from age 18 to adulthood)
Now considered a separate period called emerging adulthood
Puberty Begins

Puberty

Puberty
Time between the first onrush of hormones and full adult physical development
Usually lasting three to five years
Requires many more years are required to achieve psychosocial maturity
Puberty

Menarche
Girl's first menstrual period, signaling that she has begun ovulation.
Pregnancy is biologically possible, but ovulation and menstruation are often irregular for years after menarche.
Spermarche
Boy's first ejaculation of sperm.
Erections can occur as early as infancy, but ejaculation signals sperm production.
Puberty: Unseen Beginnings

Hormone
Organic chemical substance that is produced by one body tissue and conveyed via the bloodstream to another to affect some physiological function.
Various hormones influence thoughts, urges, emotions, and behavior.
Puberty: Unseen Beginnings

Pituitary gland
Gland in the brain that responds to a signal from the hypothalamus by producing many hormones, including those that regulate growth and control other glands, among them the adrenal and sex glands.
Biological Sequence of Puberty

Puberty begins with a hormonal signal from the hypothalamus to the pituitary gland. The pituitary, in turn, signals the adrenal glands and the ovaries or testes to produce more of their hormones.

Puberty: Unseen Beginnings

Adrenal glands
Two glands, located above the kidneys, that produce hormones (including the "stress hormones" epinephrine [adrenaline] and norepinephrine).
Puberty: Unseen Beginnings

HPA (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal) axis
Sequence of a chain reaction of hormone production, originating in the hypothalamus and moving to the pituitary and then to the adrenal glands.
Puberty: Unseen Beginnings

HPA (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal) axis
Sequence of a chain reaction of hormone production, originating in the hypothalamus and moving to the pituitary and then to the adrenal glands.
HPG (hypothalamus-pituitary-gonad) axis
Sequence of hormone production that originates in the hypothalamus, moves to the pituitary, and then to the gonads.
Puberty Begins

Gonads
Paired sex glands (ovaries in females, testicles in males).
Gonads produce hormones and gametes.
Estradiol
Sex hormone, considered the chief estrogen.
Females produce more estradiol than males do.
Testosterone
Sex hormone, the best known of the androgens (male hormones). Secreted in far greater amounts by males than by females.
Puberty Begins

Circadian rhythm
Day-night cycle of biological activity occurs approximately every 24 hours (circadian means "about a day").
Hormones of the HPA axis at puberty cause a phase delay in sleep-wake cycles.
Biology (circadian rhythms) and culture (parties and technology) work to make teenagers increasingly sleep-deprived with each year of high school.
Dreaming and Learning?

This graph shows of U.S. students who, once a week or more, fall asleep in class or are too tired to exercise.
Not shown are those who are too tired overall (59 percent for high school students) or who doze in class "almost every day" (8 percent).
Puberty Begins

Influences on the Age of Puberty
Age 11 or 12 is the most likely age of visible onset.
The rise in hormone levels that signals puberty is still considered normal in those as young as age 8 or as old as age 14.
Precocious puberty (sexual development before age 8) occurs about once in 5,000 children, for unknown reasons.
Earliest and Latest

Earliest and Latest

Puberty Begins

About two-thirds of the variation in age of puberty is genetic.
Genes on the sex chromosomes have a marked effect on age of puberty.
Girls generally develop ahead of boys.
Children who have a relatively large proportion of body fat experience puberty sooner than do their thin contemporaries.
Puberty: Body Fat

Leptin
Hormone affects appetite and is believed to be involved in the onset of puberty.
Leptin levels increase during childhood and peak at around age 12.
In both sexes, chronic malnutrition delays puberty.
Puberty Begins

Secular trend
Data on puberty over the centuries that reveals a dramatic example of a long-term statistical increase or decrease.
Each generation has experienced puberty a few weeks earlier, and has grown a centimeter or so taller, than did the preceding one.
Secular trend has stopped in developed nations.
Puberty Begins

Too early, too late
Early-maturing girls tend to have lower self-esteem, more depression, and poorer body image than later-maturing girls.
Early-maturing boys are more aggressive, law-breaking, and alcohol-abusing than later-maturing boys.
Slow developing boys tend to be more anxious, depressed, and afraid of sex.
Growing Bigger and Stronger

Growth spurt
Spurt is a relatively sudden and rapid physical growth that occurs during puberty.
Each body part increases in size on a schedule.
Height spurt follows the increase in body fat, and then a muscle spurt occurs.
Growing Bigger and Stronger

Growth spurt
Lungs triple in weight; consequently, adolescents breathe more deeply and slowly.
Heart doubles in size and the heartbeat slows, decreasing the pulse rate while increasing blood pressure.
Only lymphoid system (which includes the tonsils and adenoids), decreases in size--teenagers are less susceptible to respiratory ailments.
Growing Bigger and Stronger

Skin and hair
Skin becomes oilier, sweatier, and more prone to acne.
Hair on the head and limbs becomes coarser and darker.
New hair grows under arms, on faces, and over sex organs.
In many ways, hair is more than a growth characteristic; it becomes a display of sexuality.
Sexual Maturation

Primary sex characteristics
Parts of the body that are directly involved in reproduction, including the vagina, uterus, ovaries, testicles, and penis.
Secondary sex characteristics
Physical traits that are not directly involved in reproduction but that indicate sexual maturity, such as a man's beard and a woman's breasts.
Puberty Begins

Nutrition
Many adolescents are deficient in their intake of necessary vitamins or minerals.
Deficiencies of iron, calcium, zinc, and other minerals, since these are needed for bone and muscle growth.
Nutritional deficiencies result from the food choices that young adolescents are allowed, even enticed, to make.
Puberty Begins

Body image
Person's idea of how his or her body looks.
Girls diet partly because boys tend to prefer to date thin girls.
Boys want to look taller and stronger partly because girls value well-developed muscles in males.
Puberty Begins

Eating disorders
Anorexia nervosa
Eating disorder characterized by severe calorie restriction and the fear of being fat.
Affected individuals voluntarily undereat, or overeat and then overexercise or purge, depriving their vital organs of nutrition.
Anorexia can be fatal.
Puberty Begins

Eating disorders
Bulimia nervosa
Eating disorder characterized by binge eating and subsequent purging, usually by induced vomiting and/or use of laxatives.
Neurological Development

Different parts of the brain grow at different rates.
Limbic system (fear, emotional impulses) matures before the prefrontal cortex (planning ahead, emotional regulation).
Instinctual and emotional areas develop before the reflective ones do.
Same People, But Not the Same Brain

Cognitive Development

Logic shut down
When emotions are intense, especially when one is with peers, the logical part of the brain shuts down.
When stress, arousal, passion, sensory bombardment, drug intoxication, or deprivation is extreme, the adolescent brain is overtaken by impulses that might shame adults.
Cognitive Development

Positive aspects of adolescent brain development
Increased mylenation, which decreases reaction time
Enhanced dopamine activity, promoting pleasurable experiences
Synaptic growth, enhancing moral development and openness to new experiences and ideas
Cognitive Development

Risk and reward
Neurological research finds that the reward parts of adolescents' brains are far stronger than inhibition parts.
Slower-maturing prefrontal cortex makes powerful sensations desirable—loud music, speeding cars, strong drugs—compelling.
Thinking About Oneself

Adolescent egocentrism
Characteristic of adolescent thinking that leads young people (ages 10 to 14) to focus on themselves to the exclusion of others.
Personal fable
Aspect of adolescent egocentrism characterized by an adolescent's belief that his or her thoughts, feelings, or experiences are unique, more wonderful or awful than anyone else's.
Cognitive Development

Invincibility fable
Adolescent's egocentric conviction that he or she cannot be overcome or even harmed by anything that might defeat a normal mortal, such as unprotected sex, drug abuse, or high-speed driving.
Imaginary audience
Other people who, in an adolescent's egocentric belief, are watching and taking note of his or her appearance, ideas, and behavior. This belief makes many teenagers self-conscious.
Cognitive Development

Formal operational thought: Piaget
Fourth and final stage of cognitive development
Characterized by more systematic logic and the ability to think about abstract ideas
Hypothetical thought
Reasoning that includes propositions and possibilities that may not reflect reality
Cognitive Development

Deductive reasoning
Reasoning from a general statement, premise, or principle, through logical steps, to figure out (deduce) specifics
Sometimes called top-down reasoning
Inductive reasoning
Reasoning from one or more specific experiences or facts to a general conclusion; may be less cognitively advanced than deduction
Sometimes called bottom-up reasoning
Two Modes of Thinking

Intuitive, emotional thought
Notions that adolescents find it much easier and quicker to forget about logic and follow their impulses
Dual-process model
Notion that two networks exist within the human brain, one for emotional and one for analytical processing of stimuli
Cognitive Development

Intuitive thought
Thought that arises from an emotion or a hunch, beyond rational explanation, and is influenced by past experiences and cultural assumptions.
Analytic thought
Thought that results from analysis, such as a systematic ranking of pros and cons, risks and consequences, possibilities and facts.
Analytic thought depends on logic and rationality.
Teaching and Learning

Secondary education
Period after primary education (elementary or grade school) and before tertiary education (college)
Usually occurs from about age 12 to age 18, although the age range varies somewhat by school and by nation.
Middle school
School for children in the grades between elementary and high school.
Usually begins with grade 5 or 6 and ends with grade 8.
Motivation

Motivation
Cognitive perspective on development
Highlights the academic disengagement typical of middle school students
Causes
Puberty, alienation from teachers, reliance on peers
May be an adolescent's assumptions about his or her potential
Motivation

Entity approach to intelligence
Sees ability as innate, a fixed quantity present at birth
Reject idea that effort enhances achievement
Incremental approach to intelligence
Poses intelligence can be directly increased by effort
Believe they can master whatever they seek to learn if they pay attention, participate in class, study, and complete their homework
School Transitions

Entering a new school
Transition from one school to another often impairs a young person's ability to function and learn
Changing schools just when the growth spurt is occurring and sexual characteristics are developing is bound to create stress
The first year in any new school (middle school, high school, or college) correlates with increased bullying, decreased achievement, depression, and eating disorders
Teaching and Learning

Cyber danger
Adolescent cognitive growth benefits from shared experiences and opinions.
Often communication via the Internet bolsters fragile self-esteem.
Adolescents sometimes share personal information online without thinking about the possible consequences.
Teaching and Learning

Cyberbullying
Bullying that occurs via Internet insults and rumors, texting, anonymous phone calls, and video embarrassment
Anonymity provided by electronic technology often brings out the worst in people.
Cyberbullying is similar to other forms in intent or degree of harm.
High School

In theory and sometimes in practice, high schools promote students' analytic ability.
In U.S., an increasing number of high school students are enrolled in classes that are designed to be more rigorous and that require them to pass externally scored exams.
Greater number of requirements require all students must fulfill in order to receive an academic diploma.
Teaching and Learning

High-stakes test
Evaluation that is critical in determining success or failure
Determines if a student will graduate or be promoted
Graduation Rates on the Rebound

Those Who Do Not Go to College

Seventy percent of high school graduates enter college
This number that does not include students who never graduate from high school.
Why?
Choosing Vocations

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Students that develop a vision of their future and select courses that will help them achieve their goal.
However, few students have such a vision.
Drifting is the more common pattern.
Measuring Practical Cognition

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment)
International test taken by 15-year olds in 50 nations that is designed to measure problem solving and cognition in daily life

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How would you answer the question what is death quizlet?