Unit 2 Flashcards
(20 cards)
Describe changes across adulthood in three of the five sensory systems. What changes are primary and what changes are secondary aging? What creates these changes?
Vision
Is best in early adulthood and gradually declines. At first it is imperceptible and noticeable at middle age. Both primary (Presbyopia, dark adaptation) and secondary (glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration, diabetic retinophaty) aging affect vision.
Audition
Loss in audition begins in late teens but is gradual. Becoming aware of it in 40s. Both primary (presbycusis) and secondary (amplification of presbycusis, ossification of middle-ear bones, tinnitus) aging affect audition.
Gustation
Little changes inability to detect and discriminate between 5 tastes begins in middle adulthood. More dramatic decline in late adulthood. Primary causes are, loss and shrinkage of taste buds, alteration of ion channels, lost innervation of taste receptors. Secondary causes are medication and toxins.
What are the individual and social consequences of aging senses?
Individual consequences – not as capable of being independent, self-caring and self-efficacy in doing everything by themselves. In need of accommodations, and help. Reduced mobility with vision loss, cognitive declines with hearing loss.
Social consequences –the need to comply aids to those in need and fulfill accommodations. Vision loss limit social activities, becoming dependent on others if blindness. Hearing loss leads to reduction in social interaction loneliness, depression.
Describe two changes in the physical structure of the brain during early adulthood.
- Two growth spurts in prefrontal cortex, second one is inhibition of response from the limbic system, means that people become better at using information from emotions and not letting their emotions cloud their judgment.
- Synaptic density continues to decline, at a level beyond “pruning” (removing synapses that aren’t being used).
Describe two changes in the physical structure of the brain in middle adulthood.
In neurons dendritic loss begins, slower firing rate of neurons as well.
Old model says we have neural loss
New model says that most neurons as still the same
Dendritic loss beings & slower firing rates of neurons
Describe two changes in the physical structure of the brain in late adulthood.
Synaptic density continues declining Cortex shrinks White matter hyperintensities (areas of high intensity of white matter) Cortex shrinks Synaptic density declines continue
Primary:
Cortex shrinks
Synaptic density declines continue
Blood flow declines which leads to slower processing, especially in frontal cortex
Decline in dopamine receptors & transporters
Secondary:
White matter hyperintensities – neural atrophy & gradually damage of brain parts, caused by eg., stroke
Neurofibriallary tangles – decayed portions of dendrites from neuron increase, more damaged & non useful dendrites
Senile plaques – dead or dying neurons, symptom of alzheimers
Describe two changes in the biochemical processes of the brain across adulthood.
In late adulthood, declines in serotonin receptors and transporters.
Declines in dopamine production and receptor sites.
‘Declines in serotonin receptors and transporters (may be part of risk for depression)
Declines in dopamine production and receptor sites (more noise in noise-to-signal)
With age the effective functioning of the dopamine system declines, decline in dopamine production and receptor sites (more noise in noise-to-signal). The consequences of this change are a decline in aspect of memory.
With age there’s a decline in serotonin receptors and transporters, an abnormal processing of serotonin. The consequences are its related to cognitive decline and may be part of risk for depression as it affects mood, appetite & sleep.
Describe two changes in the function of the brain across adulthood.
Plasticity - Brain plasticity, also known as neuroplasticity, is a term that refers to the brain’s ability to change and adapt as a result of experience.
Processing speed decline - neural impulses begin to slow because of degradation of myelin sheath and increase in amyloid-beta protein.
Less blood flows, less efficient processing particularly in frontal cortex.
Cortex shrinks
Describe two neurological changes that are primary aging and two that appear to be secondary aging.x
Primary aging - Processing of information is starting to slow as firing rates in neuronal level are slowing down (early and middle adulthood). Loss of dendrites (middle adulthood). Synaptic density declines.
Secondary aging - Senile plaques - proteins clumping together/dead or dying neurons. Neurofibrillary tangles - Decaying parts of dendrites from neurons increase
Primary aging – cortex shrinks, less blood flows
Secondary aging – white matter hyperintensities, neurofibrillary tangles, senile plaques
White matter hyperintensities which is associated with atrophy and is caused by cerebrovascular events.
Neurofibrillary tangles is decayed portions of dendrites from neurons increase.
Senile plaques is abnormally hard clusters of dead or dying neurons, which is not a cause but symptom of Alzheimer’s.
Describe two reasons why changes in the brain are described as “heterogenous.”
- The decline rate, how rapidly the changes happen, 2. When the changes start occurring. Factors include sleep, exercise, education, avoiding head trauma etc.
Describe one of the three models currently used to link changes in older adults’ brains with changes in their cognitive functioning. What evidence is there to support the model?
HAROLD - suggests elders recruit neural resources from other parts of the brain to compensate for declines.
HAROLD – (hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults)
This model came as an explanation for the findings that young adults showed activation in one hemisphere while performing cognitive tasks, whereas older adults showed activation in both hemispheres. The explanation was that older adults had reduced lateralization in prefrontal lobe (not as much separate processing).
Older people uses neural resources from other parts of the brain to compensate for the decline in other parts. Lateralization is not as clear in elders that it is in younger.
CRUNCH – (compensation-related utilization of neural circuits hypothesis)
PASA – (posterior-anterior shift in aging)
Using the information-processing perspective, describe two changes in attention, two changes in processing, and two changes in memory that are tied to aging. Are these changes considered primary or secondary aging?
Attention – inhibitory loss, reduced ability to divide attention
Processing – processing speed declines (neural impulses begin to slow), effortful processing declines with age (at least older people perform worse than younger in studies)
Memory – less storage capacity in working memory, declines in explicit memory
Information processing perspective focus on processing, attention, memory, retrieval and executive functions.
Processing –
Neural impulses gets slower, degradation of myelin sheath & increase in amyloid-B proteins. These seems to be a cause of Alzheimers. The automatic doesn’t seem to change but the executive seem to decline.
In the 30s neural impulses gets slower, degradation of myelin sheath & increase in amyloid-B proteins. These seems to be a cause of alzheimers. The automatic no change but executive declines
Slower processing, depends on what adults are being asked to do. – neural impulses gets slower
Decline in amount of cognitive energy one deploys on a task – processing resources – amount of attention one has to apply to a particular situation
Difficulty inhibitory loss the processing of irrelevant information
Automatic processing – places minimal demands on attentional capacity & gets information into the system largely without being aware of it. No change
Effortful processing – requires all of the available attentional capacity, more aware of it, age differences tend to emerge
Attention –
Attentional processes decline with age, this is primary aging. Age-related changes are for example inhibitory loss, meaning that older adults have difficulty inhibiting irrelevant information. They have also reduced ability to divide attention, older can multitask but each task takes more time than for younger adults. The more complex the task is the more time it takes for adults to complete it. As mentioned, these changes are primary aging because it occurs to the whole population and isn’t due to illness or injury.
Older adults have a hard time ignoring irrelevant facts, divide attention, take a longer time for each task
Memory –
Changes to memory occur in explicit & implicit memory, working memory and long-term memory.
With explicit memory (intentional remembering of learned information at a specific time) declines with age and this is primary aging, it occurs for all with age.
Changes with working memory that are age-related is that the capacity with it declines with age meaning less storing capacity, less ability to allocate capacity to more than one task and slower rates of processing.
Changes to long-term memory is for example that recall is more difficult due to omission of information.
These are all changes that are primary aging, an example of changes to memory that are secondary aging is when a person’s explicit memory is impaired for very recent events especially those of importance. That is a change that may be evidence of an illness/disease like dementia for example.
Poorer encoding – can use encoding strategies, might be do to left lateral prefrontal cortex changes that enconding declines
Recalling/retrieval – use fewer retrieval strategies, how prefrontal cortex & hippocampus work together
Age related decline in workin memory – more trouble juggling all elements at once
Describe the EIEIO model. Give examples (preferably your own) of each type of aid.
EIEIO model is a form of training memory skills. Using external and internal memory aid you can remember implicit and explicit memories.
External explicit - kalender
External implicit - mappar på datorn
Internal explicit - Ramsa för att komma ihåg teorier för tenta
Internal implicit - turning letters into numbers, and forming acronyms out of initial letters such as NASA
What is the SOC model? Give an example of a memory process where every element of SOC is used—describe what is S, O, and C in this example.
- S - As people age, they begin to focus on or select those abilities deemed essential for functioning.
- O - People then optimize their behavior by focusing on this more limited set of abilities.
- C - Finally, people learn to compensate for declines by designing workaround strategies.
What is “G” and what is it composed of? How do components of G change across adulthood?
General intelligence
It is a variable that summarizes positive correlations among different cognitive tasks, reflecting the fact that an individual’s performance on one type of cognitive task tends to be comparable to that person’s performance on other kinds of cognitive tasks. According to longitudinal and cross sectional studies our total intellectual ability tends to decrease drastically after around 60 years of age.
There are different conceptualizations of intelligence, where G is the general intelligence commonly known as IQ.
Components of G – the interrelationships between all other levels of intelligence
What is the P-Fit model? What evidence supports it?
P-Fit model is the parieto-frontal integration theory. Which proposes that neurons that are distributed and integrated in the parietal and frontal areas of the brain are the network where intelligence comes from.
Fluid intelligence are a network of neuron in the parietofrontal cortex, suggest that intelligence is related to how well different brain regions communicate & how efficient integration between them are. Research have shown that specific cognitive functions are related to specific combination of brainstructures.
What is the neural efficiency hypothesis? What evidence supports it?
Neural efficiency hypothesis = intelligent people process information more efficiently, showing weaker neural activations in a smaller number of areas than less intelligent people.
Research evidence is mounting that this idea holds merit: with greater intelligence does come demonstrably increased efficiency in neural processing.
The neural efficiency hypothesis says that intelligent people process information more efficiently. Less activity in the brain is needed. Research has seen that higher intelligence leads to increased efficacy in neural processing but they don’t know how.
What are three forms of cognition that are thought to be post-formal operations? In what way are these not formal operations?
- Prereflective Reasoning - Belief that “knowledge is gained through the word of an authority figure or through firsthand observation, rather than, for example, through the evaluation of evidence. [People who hold these assumptions] believe that what they know is absolutely correct, and that they know with complete certainty. People who hold these assumptions treat all problems as though they were well-structured”
- Prereflective Reasoning - Belief that “knowledge is gained through the word of an authority figure or through firsthand observation, rather than, for example, through the evaluation of evidence. [People who hold these assumptions] believe that what they know is absolutely correct, and that they know with complete certainty. People who hold these assumptions treat all problems as though they were well-structured”
- Reflective Reasoning - People who hold these assumptions accept “that knowledge claims cannot be made with certainty, but [they] are not immobilized by it; rather, [they] make judgments that are ‘most reasonable’ and about which they are ‘relatively certain,’ based on their evaluation of available data. They believe they must actively construct their decisions, and that knowledge claims must be evaluated in relationship to the context in which they were generated to determine their validity. They also readily admit their willingness to reevaluate the adequacy of their judgments as new data or new methodologies become available”
What is “wisdom”? What are the different kinds of wisdom and how are they tied to age? How are they tied to intelligence? What variation is there by culture?
Wisdom - Applies to decision making about difficult and uncertain life matters.
Personal Wisdom - Self-insight, life management, coping. Introspection, need for cognition.
General wisdom - Life insight. Advice-giving, support of others.
Wisdom is aquired through experience, which is aquired by age. Wisdom is not equal to intelligence but dependent on it. Some culturs place more importance on it. Like Japan.
Characteristics of wisdom is having intentions for common good, being superior in judgement, knowledge and advice as well as having extraordinary scope, depth and balance.
Different kinds of wisdom are personal wisdom and general wisdom.
Tied to intelligence, but not equal to intelligence, it is dependent on intelligence but not equal to
Variations by culture is for example the importance of wisdom.
Wisdom deals with important or difficult matters of life and human condition. It is truly “superior” knowledge, judgement and advice. It’s knowledge with extraordinary scope, depth and balance that is applicable to specific situations. When used it is well intended and combines character.
Those who are wise are experts in basic issues in life, how to conduct life, how to interpret events and what life means. Strength, knowledge and understanding learned only by living through earlier stages in life.
There’s no association between age and wisdom. Extensive life experience with type of problem given and requisite cognitive abilities and personality is being wise. Wisdom is more related to crystallized intelligence.
Culture matter in understanding wisdom, wisdom related strategies were used in young adults in Japan and not in America, while it was used in both countries by older adults. It was easier applying wise thinking in situations they were not involved in, self-focused situations inhibit wise thinking.
What is the dual process model of cognition? Describe the “dual” part – what types of cognitions are seen as falling in one or the other type?
What age differences are seen in how adults use dual processes? What are the implications for older adults’ cognitive functioning? How are the ways older adults process information adaptive / maladaptive for them?
