FEM3102
Adult Development and Aging

5.
6.
3.
4.
7.
1.
2.
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
2

•
•
•
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
3

Development is:
1.
Life-long
• No age period dominates development
2.
Multi-dimensional
• Development consists of biological, cognitive, socioemotional and spiritual dimensions.
3.
Plastic
•
Depending on the individual’s life conditions, development may take many paths.
4

Development is:
4.
•
Historically-embedded
Development is influenced by historical conditions.
5.
•
Multidisciplinary
Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists and medical researchers all study human development and share a concern for unlocking the mysteries of development
6.
•
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.
5
(Santrock, 1999)

6

•
•
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.
7

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

9

•
•
•
•
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
10

•
•
•
•
•
Chronological age
Biological age
Functional age
Psychological age
Social age
11

•
•
•
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
12

• 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
13

•
•
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 14

•
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.
15

• 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.
16

• 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
17

•
•
•
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
18

•
•
•
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 agerange
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)
19

•
•
•
•
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 cohorts of individuals
20

21

22

•
•
•
•
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
23

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

•
•
•
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
25

• 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.
26

• 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.
27

28

•
•
•
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.
29

• 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.
30

•
•
•
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
31

•
•
•
•
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
32

• 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.
33

• 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.
34

• 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.
35

Percentage distribution of employed senior citizens by occupation, Malaysia, 1991-2000
Occupation 1991 2000
4.9
8.9
Total population
(15-59 years)
2000
6.8
Legislators, Senior Officials &
Managers
Professionals
Technicians & Associate
Professionals
Clerical Workers
Service Workers and Shop &
Market Sales Workers
Skilled Agricultural & Fishery
Workers
Craft & Related Trades
Worker
Plant & Machine-operators &
Assemblers
Elementary Occupations
Total
1.0
10.6
1.0
5.6
60.0
4.5
3.8
8.4
100.0
1.6
3.1
1.3
11.6
51.0
5.5
5.5
11.4
100.0
5.8
12.2
9.9
13.1
13.5
9.3
16.3
100.0

• 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.
37

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.
38

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.
39

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.
40

41

• 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).
42

43

44