FEM3102

1. FEM3102 Adult Development and Aging

2. Lecture topics • Why do we study adult development and aging? • Developmental psychology • Domains of development • The concept of age • Developmental influences • Developmental issues • The scenario of aging

3. Why do we study adult development and aging? • When do you consider yourself as an adult? • When do you consider yourself as an older person? • What does it mean to be old? • How long would you like to live and why? • Aging is lifelong • Lifespan perspective of human development • Reasons for studying: • Scientific • Factual • Altruistic

4. Lifespan Perspective on Human Development Development is: • Life-long • No age period dominates development • Multi-dimensional • Development consists of biological, cognitive, socioemotional and spiritual dimensions. • Plastic • Depending on the individual’s life conditions, development may take many paths.

5. Lifespan Perspective on Human Development Development is: • Historically-embedded • Development is influenced by historical conditions. • Multidisciplinary • Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists and medical researchers all study human development and share a concern for unlocking the mysteries of development • Contextual • The individual continually responds to and acts on contexts, which include a person’s biological make up, physical environment, and social, historical, and cultural contexts. (Santrock, 1999)

6. What makes us an adult?

7. Defining adulthood • Biological dimensions • Biological or physical maturation • e.g. pregnancy for women • Social dimensions • Responsible, mature & rational person • Emotional dimensions • High emotional stability including good impulse control, a high frustration tolerance and freedom from violent mood swings • Legal dimensions • Give rights and responsibilities for certain people • e.g. In US when you’re 18, you can vote • Other e.g. “age of consent” – a person can marry without parental consent, legal age to drink alcohol or drive a car.

8. 2. Developmental psychology • Developmental psychology studies: • Age-relatedintraindividual change • Age-relatedinterindividual change • The focus is on behavior • everything that people do • Development • changes in behavior • orderly, predictable • relatively durable • includes increases and decreases

10. 3. Domains of development • Biological and physical • Age-related changes inside and outside of our body • Cognitive • Age-related changes in mental activity • Thought, memory, perception, attention • Personality • Changes in personal characters at different ages • Social • Interactions of a person with others in his/her environment • How these interactions changes as people grow older • All these domains are inter-related

11. 4. The concept of age • Chronological age • Biological age • Functional age • Psychological age • Social age

12. Chronological age • Refers to the number of years that have elapsed since a person’s birth. • Chronological age per se is often not an accurate index of psychological development. • Age is merely a rough marker for the processes that influence behavior over time

13. Biological age • Defined as an estimate of the individual’s position with respect to his or her potential life span (Birren & Schroots, 2001) • Involves measuring the capacities of individual’s vital organ system. • Age is an index of biological health • An individual’s biological functioning and physical appearance may differ from other persons of the same chronological age

14. Functional age • Is an index of one’s level of competence in carrying out specific tasks. • Competencies can range from performance on a particular job to the condition of various organ systems in the body • Examples: • cardiovascular system – age 40s similar to 30s (= biological age) • Worker who is 60yrs of age to perform adequately on the job as person who is 20 yrs of age

15. Psychological age • Refers to an individual’s adaptive capacities – his/her ability to adapt to changing environmental demands. • Individuals adapt to their environments by drawing on various psychological characteristics: learning, memory, intelligence, emotional control, motivational strengths, coping styles etc.

16. Social age • Refers to the social roles and expectations people hold for themselves as well as those others impose on them. • Each society has its own expectations about roles to play and goals to attain in young, middle, and older adulthood. • Being ‘on time’ or ‘off-time’ (Neugarten, 1977). • Age is no longer relevant in predicting needs, lifestyle and accomplishments.

17. Havighurst (1972) divided the life span into 6 age periods, each with its own developmental tasks • Birth to 6 yrs of age : Infancy and early childhood • 6 to 12 yrs of age: Middle childhood • 12 to 18 yrs of age : Adolescent • 18 to 30 yrs of age: Early adulthood • 30 to 60 yrs of age: Middle age • Over 60 yrs of age : Late adulthood

18. 5. Developmental influences • Why do individuals change and develop? • Three general categories of developmental influences: a. Normative age-graded influences b. Normative history-graded influences c. Nonnormative life events • All three influences are related

19. Normative age-graded influences • Affect all or most people of similar age • Biological or environmental events related to chronological age • e.g.: puberty and menopause occur at a certain age-range • Influences can also be specific to a society/culture – reflect socialization practices • e.g.: schooling age (5-18), first-time marriage (20s or 30s), retirement (60s)

20. Normative history-graded influences • Affect all or most people who are born at a particular time(cohort) • Developmental influences related to specific era or events in history, rather than age. • These events effect the individuals dramatically (lifetime impact). • e.g.: war, economic depression, epidemics, computer revolution, internet age • Can be seen through comparing different cohortsof individuals

22. Different cohorts

23. Nonnormative life events • Unique to a person • Not necessarily associated with age or historical time • e.g.: being diagnosed with a rare illness, being involved in an accident, winning a lottery, divorce, work promotion or retrenchment. • Nonnormative life events have different effects on development depending on the age they happen. • Normative age-graded influences can become nonnormative life events

24. 6. Developmental issues • Nature vs. Nurture • Gains vs. Losses • Quantitative vs. Qualitative Change • Stagelike vs.Continuous Change • Plasticity vs. Nonplasticity of Change • Multidirectional vs. Unidirectional Change

25. Nature vs. Nurture • Is development a product of nature (i.e. hereditary, genetic and biological factors) or nurture (i.e. environmental factors and experience? • Current views emphasize the interaction between nature and nurture. e.g.: • Primary aging – nature • Secondary aging – nurture • Twin studies

26. Gains vs. Losses • Both gains and losses in behavior take place throughout life. • Birth to 20s: Growth, Maturation • After 20s: Senescence • All developmental periods are important. • Throughout the life span there are increases or decreases in attitudes, motivation and capabilities.

27. Quantitative vs. Qualitative Change • Qualitative changes are differences in kinds of behavior or aspect • Drastic and stage-like • Examples: Piaget’s cognitive development, Erikson’s psychosocial stages, personality development. • Quantitative changes are differences in amount, degree or complexity. • Gradual and continuous • Examples: The ability to sort objects into categories increases with age, the ability to retrieve information from memory gradually slows down as people age.

29. Stagelike (Discontinuous) vs. Continuous Change • Some researchers identify stages in adult development and aging. • Stage theory – assumed that we go through a series of qualitative change (sudden change in quality) that happen in specific periods of development. • Others see development as continuous where changes can be indicated through a steady increase or decrease (measurable =quantitative) in behavior.

30. Plasticity vs. Nonplasticity of Change • Can we reverse the effects of aging? • Some deficits associated with age can be corrected with proper intervention and health care. • Reserve capacity decreases with age (=plasticity levels decline) • Individuals have a limited amount of resources to deal with stress and challenges. • Each individual has potentials and limits in what they can do.

31. Multidirectional vs. Unidirectional Change • Multidirectional view of development: Intraindividual differences in aging patterns. • A person’s behavior can change in many ways: decline, increase or become stable • e.g: increase in creativity, decrease in some memory functions • Unidirectional view of development • child focused view, e.g. Piaget, Freud. • all abilities increase in the same way of maturation

32. 7. The scenario of aging • Aging is a worldwide phenomenon • Population aging happened earlier in developed countries • Developed countries got rich before they got old • Developing countries will get old before they get rich  problems

33. Older people in Malaysia • The demographic and social trends of population aging in Malaysia is moving at a quicker pace than observed 10 years ago. • Overall trends show an increasingly aging population (both in numbers and proportion). • Because of this we need to plan, prepare for the well-being, as well as optimizing the potential of future senior citizens in the country.

34. Older people in Malaysia • Older people in Malaysia is growing at a faster rate than the rest of the population. • Their size will increase from 1.4 million persons in 2000 to 3.4 million in 2020. • Females are the majority among the elderly, as in most countries of the world.

35. Older people in Malaysia • Education levels of the Malaysian population are increasing. This will implicate the possible economic involvement of future elderly. • Previously a majority of older people are involved in agriculture (traditional pattern of occupational trend). • However, the occupation trends are changing with older people participating in more varied occupations.

36. Percentage distribution of employed senior citizens by occupation, Malaysia, 1991-2000

37. Older people in Malaysia • Nuclearization of households, greater participation of women in the labor force (lesser role as a caregiver) are changing social characteristics that contribute to the future scene of aging in Malaysia.

38. Population aging: More Developed vs. Less Developed Countries • Demographic transition – reshaping the age structure of the world’s population. • mortality and then fertility decline from higher to lower levels. Fertility decline has been the primary factor of population aging. • increasing life expectancy (people are living longer) • international migration is less important as a factor in the changing age distributions.

39. Population aging: Developed countries • Fertility is well below the replacement level in more developed regions, which include almost all industrialized countries. • By 2025, life expectancy will increase, on average, to 80 years. • Average life expectancy at age 80 is projected to increase by 27% over the next 50 years as compared with 19% at age 60 and 9% at birth more people survive to old age and tend to live longer. • Women outlive men by 7.4 years.

40. Population aging: Developed countries • The proportion of older people above 80 years old now live in more developed regions (but this will soon change to less developed regions). • The great majority of centenarians (78% in 2000) live in the more developed regions. • Sex ratios at older ages are significantly lower.

41. More developed countries

42. Population aging: Developing countries • Fertility rate is higher than developed countries (average total fertility rate=5.2/woman). Fertility reduction only happened later than developed countries. • By 2025, life expectancy will increase, on average, to 71 years. • Average life expectancy at age 80 is projected to increase by 28% over the next 50 years as compared with 22% at age 60 and 17% at birth more people have a good rate at survival at birth due to improvements in mortality levels. • Women outlive men by 3.2 years (trend is rising).

43. Less developed countries

44. Questions