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Late adulthood - Coggle Diagram
Late adulthood
Cognitive development
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Senescence
the production of neurotransmitters are reduced that allow a nerve impulse to jump quickly across the synapse gap
Glutamate, acetylcholine, serotonin, and dopamine
Neural fluid decreases, myelination thins, and cerebral blood circulates slowly
Results in slower reaction time, movement, speech, and thought
Input
Sensory losses may not be noticeable because the brain automatically fills in the missing sights and sounds
Older adults are less adept at knowing where someone is looking or what their facial expression means
Older adults are less able to decipher the emotional content in speech, even when they hears the words correctly
Understanding od speech is impaired when vision is impaired because watching lips and facial expressions aid understanding
Memory
If older people suspect memory loss, anxiety itself impairs the memory
Explicit memory, recall of learned material, shows more loss than implicit memory, recognition and habits
Source amnesia
Forgetting the origin of a fact, idea,or snippet of conversation
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Mental disorders
Neurocognitive disorder
Any number of brain diseases that affects a person's ability to remember, analyze, plan, or interact with other people
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Alzheimer's disease
Gradual deterioration of memory and personality and marked by the formation of plaques of beta-amyloid protein and tangles of tau in the brain
People forget recent events or new information, particularly names and places
Generalized confusion develops, with deficits in concentration and short term memory. Speech becomes aimless and repetitious, vocabulary is limited, words get mixed up. Personality traits are not curbed by rational thought
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Full time care is needed, people cannot communicate well
People with AD become unresponsive, identity and personality have disappeared, death comes 10 to 15 years after the first signs appear
Vascular disease
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
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Frontotemporal NCDs
Deteriroration of the amygdala and frontal lobes that may be the cause of 15% of all major neurocognitive disorders
Parkinson's disease
A chronic, progressive disease that is characterized by muscle tremor and rigidity and sometimes major neurocognitive disorder, caused by reduced dopamine production in the brain
Lewy body disease
A form of major neurocognitive disorder characterized by an increase in Lewy body cells in the brain. Symptoms include visual hallucinations, momentary loss of attention, falling, and fainting
Biosocial development
Ageism
A prejudice whereby people are categorized and judged solely on the basis of their chronological age
Consequences of ageism
If older people are treated like they are frail and confused, that treatment might make the aged more dependent on others
If people believe the norm for young people to fix the old, they fail and give up
If older people think themselves as feeble, they stop taking care of themselves and avoid social interaction that makes themselves age faster
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Dependency
Young-old
Healthy, vigorous, financially secure older adults who are well integrated into the lives of their families and communities
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Old-old
Older adults who suffer from physical, mental, or social deficits
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Oldest-old
Elderly adults who are dependent on others for almost everything, requiring supportive services
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Sex
Intercourse can continue after age 65, but generally becomes less frequent or stops completely
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Driving
Reading road signs takes longer, turning the head becomes harder, reaction time slows, and night vision worsens causing the elderly to drive slowly and reduce driving in the dark
Accuracy of estimating speed of oncoming cars becomes less and makes safe merging in highway traffic difficult
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Psychosocial development
Self theories
Theories of late adulthood that emphasize the core self, or the search to maintain one's integrity and identity
Elders rely more on their personal experiences than on objective statistics, or more intuition than analysis
Integrity vs despair
The final stage of Erikson's developmental sequence in which older adults seek to integrate their unique experiences with their vision of community
Older adults maintain their self concept despite senescence, which alters appearance and social status in ways that might undercut self-esteem
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Stratification theories
Theories that emphasize that social forces, particularly those related to a person's social stratum or social category, limit individual choices and affect a person' ability to function in late adulthood because past stratification continues to limit life in various ways
Gender
Irrational, gender-based fear may limit female independence
Ethnic
Past ethnic discrimination results in poverty for many minority families, itself a result of stratification in the quality of education, the health of neighborhoods, the salaries of jobs
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Income
Poverty magnifies the stratification of gender, ethnicity, and immigration
Age
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Disengagement theory
The view that aging makes a person's social sphere increasingly narrow, resulting in role relinquishment, withdrawal, and passivity
Activity theory
The view that elderly people want and need to remain active in a variety of social spheres and become withdrawn only unwillingly