The Developing Person
Through the Life Span 8e
by Kathleen Stassen Berger
Adulthood
Chapters 20-22
Biosocial Development
Cognitive Development
Psychosocial Development
The Aging Brain
 Neurons fire more slowly, messages sent from the axon of
one neuron are not picked up as quickly by the dendrite of
another neuron, reaction time lengthens
 Brain size decreases, multitasking gets harder,
processing takes longer
 Complex working memory tasks may become impossible
 Severe brain loss in middle age is usually due to:
Drug abuse
Poor circulation
Viruses
Genes
Physical Appearance
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Collagen decreases by about 1% per year
By age 30: Skin is becoming thinner and
less flexible; wrinkles become visible
By age 60: All faces are wrinkled
Hair turns gray and gets thinner
“Middle-age spread” appears
Muscles weaken
Height decreases by late middle age
Many changes occur more slowly in people
who exercise.
Sense Organs
Vision
Peripheral vision narrows faster than
frontal vision
 Color vision shifts from vivid to faded
more quickly than does black and white
 Nearsightedness: (Myopia)Increases
gradually beginning in one’s 20s.
 Farsightedness: (Presbyopia)Lens of
the eye is less elastic and the cornea
flattens by middle age.
 Younger adults can be either nearsighted
or farsighted; most older adults are both
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Vision
Hearing
Presbycusia (prez-bi-kyoo-zhuh)
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A loss of hearing that is associated with senescence and that
usually does not become apparent until after age 60
The Sexual-Reproductive System
Sexual responsiveness
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Sexual arousal occurs more slowly
with age and orgasm takes longer.
Distress at slower responsiveness is
more associated with anxiety,
interpersonal relationships, and
expectations than with aging itself.
Study Findings:
- Adults of all ages enjoy “very high
levels of emotional satisfaction and
physical pleasure from sex within their
relationships.”
- Men and women were most likely to be
“extremely satisfied” with sex if in a
committed, monogamous relationship.
Fertility
Infertility is most common in nations where medical care is scarce and
STIs are common.
United States: 15% of all couples are infertile
– Partly because many postpone childbearing
– Half of those trying to conceive in their 40s are infertile and the other
half risk various complications
In males:
 Multiple factors (e.g. advanced age, fever, radiation, prescription drugs,
stress, environmental toxins, drug abuse, alcoholism, cigarette smoking)
can reduce sperm number, shape, and motility.
In females:
 Fertility can be affected by anything that impairs physical functioning
(e.g. advanced age, diseases, smoking, extreme dieting, obesity).
 Pelvic inflammatory disease can block the fallopian tubes, preventing
sperm from reaching an ovum.
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Fertility Treatments
 Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART)
 Advances in medicine have solved about half of all fertility
problems.
 Overcomes obstacles such as a low sperm count and blocked
fallopian tubes.
 In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)
 Procedure in which ova (egg cells) are surgically removed
from a woman and fertilized with sperm in a laboratory.
 After the fertilized cells (the zygotes) have divided several
times, they are inserted into the woman’s uterus
Menopause & Adropause
 Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)
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Treatment to compensate for hormone reduction at menopause or after
removal of the ovaries.
Usually involves estrogen and progesterone
Minimizes menopausal symptoms and diminishes the risk of
osteoporosis in later adulthood.
Involves health risks.
Health Habits and Age
Drug Abuse
 Abuse of illegal drugs decreases markedly over
adulthood.
 Marijuana use is slowest to decline.
 In the U.S., 8% of 24-34 year olds still use it,
impairing cognition and oral health.
 Abuse of prescribed drugs increases in adulthood.
 Tobacco
• Cigarette smoking has declined in the U.S. over the
past 50 years.
• Worldwide trends are less encouraging.
Alcohol Abuse
Drinking in moderation
- No more than 1-2 drinks a day
increases life expectancy.
- Alcohol reduces
coronary heart disease and strokes.
- Increases “good” cholesterol and reduces
“bad” cholesterol.
- Lowers blood pressure.
Heavy Drinking
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Increases the risk of violent death and is
implicated in 60 diseases.
Stark international variations in alcohol abuse.
Binge drinking signals a problem
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About 20% of U.S. adults had five or more drinks on a single
occasion in the past year.
Health Habits and Age
United States Facts:
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Highest rates of obesity and diabetes
Only 27% of U.S. adults eat three daily servings of vegetables.
66% of U.S. adults are overweight
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Of those, 50% are obese and 5% morbidly obese
Metabolism decreases by one-third between ages 20 and 60.
Genetics: Two alleles that correlate with both diabetes and weight.
Increase in obesity rates cannot be blamed on genes  cultural influences
are more important!
Health Habits and Age
Inactivity
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Regular physical activity at every stage of life protects
against serious illness.
Sitting for long hours correlates with almost every
unhealthy condition.
and health is causal: People who are more fit are likely to
resist disease and feel healthier as they age.
Accumulating Stressors
 Stressor
 Any situation, event, experience, or other stimulus that causes a
person to feel stressed.
 Allostatic load
 The total physiological stress that a person has
 A high load increases the risk of disease.
 Weathering
 Gradual accumulation of stressors over a long period of time,
wearing down the resilience and resistance of a person.
Accumulating Stressors
 Problem-focused coping
 A strategy to deal with stress by dealing with it directly.
 Emotion-focused coping
 A strategy to deal with stress by changing feelings about the
stressor.
Measuring Health
 Most of the U.S. expenditure on health goes toward preventing death among
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people who are already sick.
Public health
Measures include: Morbidity, Mortality, Disability, Vitality
Measures that help prevent morbidity, mortality, and disability in the
public at large. i.e. immunization, preventive health practices.
Mortality
– Death
– Usually refers to the number of deaths each year per 1,000 members of a
given population.
Morbidity
– Disease
– Refers to the rate of physical and emotional, acute (sudden), chronic
(ongoing), and fatal diseases in a given population.
Measuring Health
 Disability
Long-term difficulty in performing normal activities of daily life
because of some physical, emotional, or mental condition.
Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)
 A measure of the reduced quality of life caused by disability.
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 Vitality
Measure of health that refers to how healthy and energetic—
physically, emotionally, and socially—an individual actually feels.
Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs)
 Comparing survival without vitality to survival with good health.
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Correlating Income and Health
Money and education affect health in every nation
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Well-educated, financially secure adults live longer.
Suspected reasons:
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Education teaches healthy habits.
Education leads to higher income, which allows better housing and
medical care.
Education may be a marker for intelligence, which is a protective
factor.
Correlating Income and Health
Cognitive Development
in Adulthood
What is Intelligence?
General intelligence (g)
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Intelligence is one basic trait that
involves all cognitive abilities,
which people possess in varying
amounts.
Cannot be measured directly but
inferred from various abilities
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E.g. vocabulary, memory, and
reasoning.
Many scientists are trying to find
one common factor (genes, early
brain development, or some specific
aspect of health) that underlies IQ.
Research on Age and Intelligence
Does General Intelligence
increase or decrease
after age 20?
Research on Age and Intelligence
Cross-Sectional Research
(first half of the 20th century)
 U.S. Army: Tested aptitude of all literate draftees
during World War I (1923)
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Intellectual ability peaked at about age 18, stayed at that
level until the mid-20s, and then began to decline.
 Classic study of 1,191 individuals, aged 10 to 60,
from 19 New England villages (1933)
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IQ scores peaked between ages 18 and 21 and then
gradually fell, with the average 55-year-old scoring the
same as the average 14-year-old.
Research on Age and Intelligence
Longitudinal Research
(1955 study of child genius study in 1921)
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Data found many intellectual gains through
adulthood
Probably due to changes in the environment (more
education, improved nutrition, smaller family size,
fewer infections) and NOT changes in innate
intelligence
Better than cross-sectional research but also has
problems
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E.g. practice effects, high attrition rates.
Research on Age and Intelligence
Cross-Sequential Research
 Combines both cross-sectional and longitudinal
designs.
 Seattle Longitudinal Study
Cross-sequential study of adult intelligence
 Schaie began this study in 1956; the most recent testing
was conducted in 2005.
 500 adults, aged 20 to 50, were tested on five primary
mental abilities.
 New cohort was added and followed every 7 years.
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Research on Age and Intelligence
Measures in the Seattle Longitudinal Study
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5.
Verbal meaning (comprehension)
Spatial orientation
Inductive reasoning
Number ability
Word fluency (rapid associations)
Findings
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People improve in most mental abilities during
adulthood and decline later in life.
Each ability has a distinct pattern for each gender.
Research on Age and Intelligence
Components of Intelligence: Many and Varied
Two Clusters of Intelligence (Cattell)
 Fluid Intelligence
Those types of basic intelligence that make learning of all
sorts quick and thorough.
 Includes abilities such as working memory, abstract
thought, and speed of thinking.
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 Crystallized Intelligence
 Those types of intellectual ability that reflect accumulated
learning.
 Vocabulary and general information are examples.
Components of Intelligence: Many and Varied
Three Forms of Intelligence (Sternberg)
 Analytic intelligence
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Valuable in high school and college, as students are
expected to remember and analyze various ideas.
 Creative intelligence
 Allows people to find a better match to their skills, values,
or desires.
 Practical intelligence
 Useful as people age and need to manage their daily lives.
Selective Gains and Losses
Selective Optimization with Compensation
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Theory that people try to maintain a balance in their lives by
looking for the best way to compensate for physical and
cognitive losses and to become more proficient in activities
they can already do well
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Paul and Margaret Baltes, 1990.
Expert Cognition
 Selective Expert
 Someone who is notably more skilled and
knowledgeable than the average person about
whichever activities are personally meaningful.
 Expertise
 Guided by culture and context.
 Experts are more skilled, proficient, and knowledgeable
at a particular task than the average person, especially
a novice who has not practiced that skill.
 Experts do not necessarily have extraordinary
intellectual ability.
Expert Cognition
 Intuitive
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Experts rely on their past experiences and on immediate
contexts; their actions are more intuitive and less
stereotypic.
Novices follow formal procedures and rules.
 Automatic Processing
Thinking that occurs without deliberate, conscious thought.
 Strategic
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Experts have more and better strategies, especially when
problems are unexpected.
 Flexible
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Experts are creative and curious, deliberately experimenting and
enjoying the challenge when things do not go according to plan.
Psychosocial Development
in Adulthood
Multiple Clocks
Old norms and beliefs about aging have become
outdated
People have children later, marry later, change
careers, etc…
Major Developmental Theories of Adulthood
Erikson and Maslow
Erikson
Identity vs Role Confusion
Intimacy vs Isolation
Generativity vs Stagnation
Integrity vs Despair
Maslow
Hierarchy of Needs
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In his later years, Maslow reassessed his final level, self-actualization.
He suggested another level after that, called self-transcendence, not
attained till late in life.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Midlife Crisis Myth
 A supposed period of unusual anxiety, radical self-
reexamination, and sudden transformation
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Once widely associated with middle age but that actually had
more to do with developmental history.
Popularized by Gail Sheehy (1976) and Daniel Levinson (1978).
Personality Throughout Adulthood
Circumstances Contributing to Personality
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Genes
Parental Practices
Culture
Adult Circumstances
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Of these four, genes are probably the most influential,
according to longitudinal studies.
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Since genes do not change from conception through death, it
is not surprising that every study finds
substantial continuity in personality.
Personality throughout Adulthood
The Big Five
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Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Outgoing, assertive, active
Agreeableness
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Organized, deliberate, conforming, self-disciplined
Extroversion
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Imaginative, curious, artistic, creative, open to new
experiences
Kind, helpful, easygoing, generous
Neuroticism
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Anxious, moody, self-punishing, critical
Intimacy
 Intimacy needs are lifelong.
 Adults meet their need for social
connection through their relationships
with relatives, friends, coworkers, and
romantic partners.
 Social convoy
 Collectively, the family members, friends,
acquaintances, and even strangers who move
through life with an individual.
Friends:
most crucial members of the social convoy
 Often able to provide practical help and useful
advice when serious problems—death of a family
member, personal illness, loss of a job—arise.
Family Bonds
Parents & Adult Children
 Over the years of adulthood, parents and adult children
typically increase in closeness, forgiveness, and pride as
both generations gain maturity.
Adult Siblings
• Adult siblings also often become mutually supportive in
adulthood.
Familism
The belief that family members should
support one another, sacrificing individual
freedom and success, if necessary, in order
to preserve family unity.
Family Bonds
 Family closeness can sometimes be destructive.
 Some adults wisely keep their distance from their
blood relatives.
 Fictive kin
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Someone who is accepted as part
of a family to which there is
no blood relation
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Adults need kin,
fictive or otherwise.
Committed Partners
 Adults everywhere seek committed sexual
partnerships to help meet their needs for intimacy
as well as to raise children, share resources, and
provide care when needed.
 Less than 15 percent of U.S. residents marry before
age 25, but by age 40, 85 percent have married.
 Married people are a little happier, healthier, and
richer than never-married ones—but not by much.
Empty Nest
Empty nest
 The time when parents are alone again after their
children have moved out and launched their own
lives
 Contrary to outdated impressions, often improves a
relationship.
 Most long-married people
stay together because they
love and trust each other,
not simply because they
are stuck.
Divorce and Separation
 Adults are affected (for better or for worse) by
divorce in ways they never anticipated.
 Generally, those in very distressed marriages are
happier after divorce, while those in merely distant
marriages (most U.S. divorces) are less happy than
they thought they would be.
 Divorce reduces income, severs friendships, and
weakens family ties.
Caregiving
 Some caregiving involves meeting another person’s
physical needs—feeding, cleaning, and so on—but
much of it has to do with fulfilling another person’s
psychological needs.
 Kinkeeper
 A caregiver who takes responsibility for maintaining
communication among family members.
Caring for Nonbiological Children
 Roughly one-third of all North American adults
become stepparents, adoptive parents, or foster
parents.
 Many adopted or foster children remain attached
to their birth parents.
 If children are not attached to anyone (ie. after
spending years in an institution), they are
mistrustful of all adults and fearful of becoming
too dependent.
Caring for Aging Parents
Sandwich Generation
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The generation of middle-aged people who are supposedly
“squeezed” by the needs of the younger and older members of
their families.
In reality, some adults do feel pressured by these obligations,
but most are not burdened by them, either because they enjoy
fulfilling them or because they choose to take on only some of
them or none of them.
Working for More Than Money
Work meets generativity needs by allowing
people to do the following:
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Develop and use their personal skills
Express their creative energy
Aid and advise coworkers,
as a mentor or friend
Support the education and health
of their families
Contribute to the community by
providing goods or services
Between ages 25 and 42, the average U.S. worker
has five separate employers.