Psychology of Aging

Psychology of Aging Instructor: Geneviève Quintin Lecture 1 September 12th, 2007

Psy313: Psychology of Aging Lectures: Wednesdays, 6-9 pm, room SS 1073 Your Instructor: Geneviève Quintin Email Address: geneviev@psych.utoronto.ca Course Website: http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~geneviev

What Is Aging? • When you think about aging, what images does that bring to your mind? • What are the good aspects of aging? • What are some problems in aging? • What do you hope we will discuss in this course?

Evaluations • Midterm Exam: 34% of the final grade • Research Proposal: 32% of the final grade, including 2% for outline submission • Final Exam: 34% of the final grade

Today’s Lecture • What factors come into play when we talk about aging? • What do we know about older adults in Canada and around the world? • How do we study aging?

Percentage of Population Over 65 in 2000

Projected Percentage of Population Over 65 in 2030

Important Definitions • Gerontology:Study of aging from maturity through old age. • Young-old vs. old-old. • Ageism: A form of discrimination against older adults based on age. • Can you think of any examples?

Life-Span Development • Multidirectionality: Development late in life does not only reflect losses but also growth. e.g.: Decline in vision but increased wisdom/perspective on life • Plasticity: Capacity for change & learning. e.g.: Learning to play an instrument. • Historical Context: Environmental and cultural influences. Generational effects. • Multiple Causation: Biological, psychological, sociocultural & life-cycle influences.

What Are These Influences? • What do you think we mean by biological, psychological, sociocultural, and life-cycle forces? • Example: Reaction to being diagnosed with cancer in a young adult vs. an older adult.

How Do These Influences Act Over Time? • Normative Age-Graded Influences: Experiences that tend to occur at a certain chronological age. e.g.: Puberty, time at which people get married or have children. • Normative History-Graded Influences: Events shared by most people in a certain culture at a certain point in time. • Nonnormative Influences: Random or rare events that are specific to the life of an individual.

Children of the 80s vs. 90s? • You knew all the characters names and their life stories on “Saved By The Bell”. • You loved to play Mario 64 or Final Fantasy. • You played and or collected “Pogs”. • You knew the Macarena by heart. • You had or knew someone with the “Rachel” haircut. • You wore really baggy jeans. • You can name at least half of the members of the "Brat Pack". • You remember when ATARI was a state of the art video game system. • You owned any cassettes. • You could breakdance, or wished you could. • You wanted to be The Hulk for Halloween. • You thought that Transformers were more than meets the eye. • You wanted to be on Star Search.

Is Age Just A Number? • You meet two people who tell you they are both 40 years old. • They are thus the same __________ age, but it doesn’t tell you if they are the same ________ age. • Primary vs. Secondary vs. Tertiary aging. • In this course, we will focus mostly on primary aging.

A Little Bit Of Demography • What do we know about older adults as a group? How can we describe them? • What are some characteristics of Canadian older adults? Are they different from younger adults?

Public Health Agency of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/seniors_at_glance/poster1_e.html

Population Distribution in the United States in 2001

Projected Population Distribution in the United States in 2050

Health Canada. (2002). Canada’s aging population. Ottawa, ON: Minister of Public Works and Government Services. Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/fed_paper/pdfs/fedpager_e.pdf

Projected Growth of Minority Population of Older Adults in the United States

How Educated Are Older Adults?

What Level of Income Do Seniors Have?

Are Older Adults Important Consumers? Public Health Agency of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/seniors_at_glance/poster1_e.html

Are Older Adults Independent? Public Health Agency of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/seniors_at_glance/poster1_e.html

Who Are These Older Adults? • How have they changed over the years as a group? In gender? In number? In ethnicity? • What are some of their other characteristics? • Is this portrait consistent with your initial conceptions? With what is portrayed in the media?

Controversies in Aging • Nature vs. Nurture: Is it a question of genes or environment? • Stability vs. Change: Can you teach old dogs new tricks? • Continuity vs. Discontinuity: Is aging a series of punctual changes or continuous changes? • Universal vs. Context-Specific: Is there a unique path in aging?

How Do We Study Aging? • What are the strengths and weaknesses of experimental design, correlational design & case study? Some of the difficulties include: • Age differences vs. age effects • Cohort effects • Time-of-measurement effects

Conclusions • We experience changes as we grow older, but contrary to stereotypes, it does not inevitably lead to decline in all areas. • Older adults are the fastest growing demographic age group, which will impact societies in many ways. We will explore those consequences in future lectures. • You will need to keep in mind the various caveats and methodological difficulties to assess whether a topic was adequately studied.

Chapter 2: Biological Aging

What Is Biological Aging? • Can you give me examples of physical changes people undergo as they age? • What are some of the impacts of those changes?

Questions To Answer • Why do we age? • What are some normal and abnormal physical changes associated with aging? • What factors influence how we age?

Why Do We Age? • Many theories that are not mutually exclusive. • Rate-of-Living Theories Focus on The Overall Contributrion of Systems in the Body: Limited energy. • Metabolic rates: Can only burn so much energy before too much damage. • Limited calory consumption: Evidence linking amount of calories consumed to lifespan in rats and mice. • Adaptation to stress.

Why Do We Age? • Cellular Theories Focus On Cells As Opposed to Systems. • Cells are limited in the number of divisions they can undergo. • Cross-linking of proteins making the body stiffer. e.g.: Lowers heart rate. • Free radicals. Antioxidants are frequently used to counteract their effects.

Why Do We Age? • Programmed Cell Death Theories: Theories Focusing on Genetics. • Is aging programmed into the genetic code? • Cells appear to receive signals to self-destruct. • Genetic pathologies causing destruction: • Osteoarthritis • Changes in the brain cells • Alzheimer’s disease • Parkinson’s disease

Aging: Genetics or Environment? • Or am I going to age like my parents and grand-parents? • The answer: Both play an important role! • In the 30s, Pearl & Pearl showed that people who live for a long time tend to come from ancestors who lived long lives. • What could confound such findings?

Changes in Appearance and Mobility • Changes in skin, hair, voice, height, weight, bones, muscles,… occur as we age. • How can the environment contribute to those changes? • Example of an abnormal change: Osteoporosis • Loss of bone mass and increased porosity, which creates a fragilization of the bones. • Mostly seen in women: 1 woman in 4 over 50 as opposed to 1 man in 8.

Exploring Osteoporosis Riggs et al. (1998): Model of osteoporosis mostly centered on estrogen deficiency to explain changes in both women and men. Estrogen is crucial in bone mass development. Testosterone provides an additional periosteal apposition, which explains larger skeletal structure in men. (Riggs et al. 2002). Menopause: Causes a 1st phase of accelerated bone loss followed by a second slow decline. Men experience the same slow decline as women.

Psychology of Aging