PSY2071 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Ageism, Sound Localization, Visual Acuity
5 Jun 2018
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PSY2071 Lecture – Week 8 – Middle and Late Adulthood
midlife
• midlife
•
o typically described as 40s to 50s
o factors influencing our perceptions
o
▪ sec
▪ socioeconomic status
▪ personality
• personality
•
o two main views of personality changes during adulthood depend
on circumstances
o
▪ no changes - personality remains stable
▪ change occurs in new stages of life due to life experiences
o BIG 5
o
▪ largely genetically determined temperamental qualities
that underlie personality
▪
▪ neuroticism
▪ extraversion
▪ opens to experience
▪ conscientiousness
▪ agreeableness
o tracking C
o
▪ conscientiousness
▪
▪ good childhood executive functions defines C - being
able to think through actions and modulating
emotion
▪ important as IQ in predicting academic performance
▪ formed by convergence of genetic and
environmental influences
▪ more stable marriages
▪ tend to be affluent or middle class
o maturity increases during adulthood
o
▪ study examining BIG 5 in 54 countries
▪
▪ agreeableness and extraversion increased from
youth into middle age in every country
▪ no major negative life events = more distressed
events than adults who had experienced a few
traumatic events
▪ maximum life happiness is early 60s
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find more resources at oneclass.com
• generativity
•
o the key to happiness
o
▪ depends - is it based on?
▪
▪ hedonic happiness
▪ eudaemonic happiness
o erikson’s - the seventh psycho-social task
o
▪ in midlife people find meaning from nurturing the next
generation, caring or other or enriching the lives of others
through their work
▪ if not achieved - people stagnate
o mcadams study
o
▪ measures of generativity
▪
▪ generative attitudes
▪ generative goals and priorities
▪ generative activities
▪ results
▪
▪ few age differences in generative attitudes
▪ age differences in generative priorities
• intelligence
•
o does it decline in middle and later life?
o
▪ recent research - longitudinal studies
▪
▪ different developmental patterns in intelligence
▪ stable and even increasing IQ scores until mid 30s
and some to mid 50s then decline
▪ difficulties in answering this question
▪
▪ practice effect
▪ attrition
▪ physical performance
▪
▪ timed
▪ reaction time slows with age
▪ results might reflect physical rather than
cognitive changes
o type of intelligence
o
▪ fluid intelligence
▪
▪ the ability to deal with new problems or situations
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find more resources at oneclass.com
▪ inductive reasoning, spatial orientation, perpetual
speed, verbal memory
▪ declines with age
▪ crystallised intelligence
▪
▪ is the store of informations kills and strategies that
people have acquired through education and prior
experiences and through previous use of fluid
intelligence
▪ includes numerical and verbal abilities - e.g.
crossword puzzles and mathematical problems
▪ remains consistent or increases with age
▪ many types of ability
▪
▪ some abilities begin to decline gradually - 25 years -
continue to decline through to old age - e.g. inductive
reasoning, spatial orientation, perceptual speed,
verbal memory
▪ numeric ability - increase until mid 40s, lower at 60 -
stable
▪ verbal ability - improves until 40 years - remains
stable
o what influences decline
o
▪ schaie and wills - taught skills to people with reduced
reasoning and spatial skills
▪
▪ half showed significant improvement
▪ plasticity - or modifiable behaviour - suggests these
skills are not fixed and changes can occur in late
adulthood
▪ some environmental and cultural factors are related to level
of intellectual decline
▪ less decline associated with
▪
▪ good health
▪ involvement in an intellectual stimulating
environment
▪ flexible personality type
▪ married to a bright spouse
▪ maintenance of good perceptual processing speed
▪ feeling self-satisfied
o optimisation and compensation
o
▪ older adults must compensate for ageing by selecting one
task to optimise their overall performance
• post formal though
•
o adult stage of piaget’s theory
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
