NURS2003 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: Dependency Ratio, Socioeconomic Status, Intergenerational Equity
CHAPTER 13 – LATER LIFE: SOCIOEMOTIONAL AND COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
Setting the Context: Scanning the New Older World
Median age: the age at which 50% of a population is older and 50% is younger
Rising due to declining fertility, longer life expectancies and of course, the baby
boom
Young-old: people in their sixties and seventies
Old-old: people age 80 and older
While our ideas about the defining qualities of “old age” are universal, we also
have contradictory images about the elderly because there are such dramatic
differences between being young-old and old-old
The stereotype that other cultures treated (or view) their elders more
positively than we do is false
The Evolving Self
Everyone believes that as people get older, memory declines
Elderly people do perform less well than young on most memory tasks
Memory challenges that are more difficult – such as linking faces to specific
situation, remembering bits of information quickly and especially divided-
attention tasks – produce the most severe deficits and losses in these
situation begin at a surprisingly young age
Divided-attention task: a difficult memory challenge involving memorising material
while simultaneously monitoring something else
Using the information-processing perspective, researchers find that as people
age, working memory-bin capacity declines because the executive processor is
less able to screen out task-irrelevant thoughts
Memory-systems perspective: a framework that divides memory into three types
– procedural, semantic and episodic memory
Using the memory-systems perspective, studies reveal few age-related losses
in semantic memory or procedural memory but dramatic declines in episodic
memory
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Procedural memory: in the memory-systems perspective, the most resilient
(longest-lasting) type of memory; refers to material, such as well-learned physical
skills, that we automatically recall without conscious awareness
Semantic memory: in the memory-systems perspective, a moderately resilient
(long-lasting) type if memory; refers to our ability to recall basic facts
Episodic memory: in the memory-systems perspective, the most fragile type of
memory, involving the recall of the ongoing events of daily life
To improve memory in old age (or at nay age), use selective optimisation with
compensation, employ mnemonic techniques and foster memory self-efficacy
Mnemonic technique: a strategy for aiding memory, often by using imagery or
enhancing the emotional meaning of what needs to be learned
Socioemotional selectivity theory: a theory of aging (and the lifespan) put forth by
Laura Carstensen, describing how the time we have left to love affects our
priorities and social relationships. Specifically, in later life people focus on the
present and prioritise being with their closest attachment figures
Suggests that in old age (or at any age), when people see their future as
limited, they focus on maximising the quality of their current life and prefer to
be with their closest attachment figures
This focus on enjoying the present, plus late life positivity effect and lower
daily stress offer compelling reasons why old age can be an unusually
satisfying life stage
Unfortunately however, this upbeat emotional portrait applies mainly to
affluent, healthy young-old people but nit the old-old
It also may not exist in the future if nations reduce their old age government
support
Still, surveys show people live into their eighties and nineties highly satisfied if
they reach integrity and feel a sense of meaning and control in life
Positivity effect: the tendency for older people to focus in positive experiences
and screen out negative events
Integrity: Erik Erikson’s eighth psychosocial stage, in which elderly people decide
that their life missions have been fulfilled and so accept impending death
Later-Life Transitions
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