What are the 3 stages of adulthood?
- Early Adulthood
- Middle Adulthood
- Late Adulthood
Describe physical development in middle adulthood
- Physical vigour reliant on health and exercise
- Gradual decline in fertility
- Men experience gradual decline in sperm, testosterone level
- Women experience menopause as menstrual cycle
Describe physical development of life expectancy in late adulthood
- Increase life expectancy, decreasing birth rates
- Tips of chromosomes telomeres wear down
- Accelerated by smoking, obesity and stress
- As telomeres shorten, ageing cells may die without being replaced with perfect genetic replicas
Describe physical development of sensory abilities, strength, stamina and health in late adulthood
- Visual sharpness, depth perception and adaptation diminishes
- Pupil shrinks, lens become less transparent reducing light reaching retina
- Disease fighting immune system weakens
- Accumulation of antibodies, suffer fewer short-term ailments
Describe physical development of ageing brain in late adulthood
- Take more time to react, solve perceptual puzzles, remember names
- Processing lag has deadly consequences
- Blood brain barrier breaks down beginning in hippocampus, further cognitive decline
- Small gradual loss of brain cells
- Plasticity in ageing brain, recruits and reorganises neural networks
What is a brief overview of adulthood cognitive development?
- Early adulthood peak time for learning and remembering
- Memory depends on involvement in task
- Prospective memory strong when events trigger a memory
Describe cognitive development with maintaining mental abilities
- Exercising brains on “cognitive treadmill”, with memory, visual tracking, problem solving exercises
- Brain natural plasticity gives ability to improve functioning
- Age less of a predictor of memory and intelligence
Describe the term “Neuro Cognitive disorders (NCD)”
- Progressively damage the brain, causing mental erosion
- Loss of brain cells and deterioration of neurons that produce neurotransmitter Ach (vital to memory and thinking)
What is Alzheimer’s Disease?
Neurocognitive disorder marked by neural plaques, often with onset after age 80, entailing a progressive decline in memory and other cognitive abilities
Describe adulthood’s ages and stages during social development
- Social clock: right time to leave home, get a job, marry, have children, retire
- Chance events have lasting significance by deflecting us down one road then another
What is the social clock?
Culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood and retirement
What are the commitments in adulthood
- Love: intimacy, attachment, commitment, love central to health and happy adulthood
- Marked by similarities of interests and values, sharing of emotional and material support
- Marriage predictor of happiness, physical and mental health
Describe wellbeing across the lifespan
- Look back with satisfaction, regret. Move forward with hope or dread
- Positive feelings, supported by enhanced emotional control
- Amyglada (neural processing centre for emotions responds less actively to negative events)
- Older people have comforting feeling that life has been good
