PYC4805 (Adult Development) Summary of Textbook: Chapter 1-3
Textbook: Adult Development & Aging (8th edition) written by: John C. Cavanaugh & Fredda Blanchard-Fields
Chapter 1: Studying Adult Development and Aging
1.1 PERSPECTIVES ON ADULT DEVELOPMENT & AGING
- Perspectives about old age is changing: older adults are being looked at differently today.
- The baby boom generation (people born between 1946 and 1964) are the healthiest + most active
generation to reach old age in history!
They changed the way in which older adults are perceived and treated.
- Gerontology: the scientific study of aging from maturity through old age as well as the study of
older adults as a special group.
- Gerontology has changed our understanding of aging + the aging process.
- Aging reflects the individual differences you have come to expect across people as they change
over time.
- Yet, many MYTHS about old people persist. These myths of aging lead to negative stereotypes of
older people, which may result in ageism.
- Ageism: a form of discrimination against older adults based on their age.
- Examples of myths and negative stereotypes about Aging:
- Believing that old people are senile and are incapable of making decisions about their lives.
- When people are impatient with older adults in the grocery store checkout line.
- Dismissing al older person’s physical complaints with the question: “What do you expect for
someone your age?”
- The Life-Span Perspective: divides human development into 2 phases:
1. An early phase: childhood and adolescence
2. A later phase: young adulthood, middle age and old age
- The Life-Span Perspective enables one to view adulthood from a broad perspective.
- The Life-Span Perspective emphasizes that human development takes a lifetime to complete.
- According to the Life-Span Perspective: adult development & aging are complex phenomena that
CANNOT be understood within the scope of a single disciplinary approach.
- One of the most important perspectives on Life-Span development is that of Paul Baltes.
- Paul Baltes identified 4 key features of the Life-Span perspective:
1. Multidirectionality: Development involves both growth & decline. Ex: vocabulary may increase
but, reaction time may decrease.
2. Plasticity: One’s capacity is not predetermined or set in concrete many skills can be trained or
improved even in later life.
3. Historical context: Each individual develops within a particular set of circumstances determined by
the historical time in which you are born and the culture in which you grow up.
4. Multiple causation: Development results from a variety of sources. Development is shaped by:
biological, psychological, sociocultural and lifecycle forces.
- Baltes argued that life-span development consists of the dynamic interactions among: growth,
maintenance and loss regulation. He argues that there are 3 critical factors, that collectively form
the Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC) approach:
1. As people age, they select abilities deemed essential for functioning.
2. People optimize their behaviour by focusing on this limited set of abilities.
3. People learn to compensate for declines by designing workaround strategies.
- SOC thus explains how people shift more and more resources to maintain function and deal with
biologically related losses as we grow old, leaving fewer resources to be devoted to continued
growth.
- The Demographics of Aging:
- There have never been as many older adults alive as there are now.
1
,- By 2050, the number of older adults in both developed and developing countries will have
increased dramatically!
- As a result: this will place enormous pressure on: pension systems, health care and other human
services. Individuals will have higher tax burden in future and the growing strain on social services
will intensify.
- Demographers: people who study population trends.
- Population pyramid: a graphic technique used by Demographers to illustrate population changes.
- The Diversity of older adults:
- In terms of gender: older women outnumber older men.
- Better-educated people tend to live longer – due to higher incomes which give better access to
good healthcare and healthier lifestyles.
1.2 ISSUES IN STUDYING ADULT DEVELOPMENT & AGING:
- Human development can be viewed from the bio-psycho-social framework that shows that
human development results from interacting forces.
- The 4 main interacting forces that shape development according to Developmentalists:
1. Biological: all genetic and health-related factors that affect development. Ex. Menopause, facial
wrinkling + changes in major organ systems.
2. Psychological: all internal perceptual, cognitive, emotional and personality factors that affect
development. Collectively, psychological forces provide the characteristics we notice about people
that make them individuals.
3. Sociocultural: Interpersonal, societal, cultural and ethnic factors that affect development.
Sociocultural forces provide the overall contexts in which we develop.
4. Life cycle: reflect differences in how the same event/ combination of biological, psychological and
sociocultural forces affects people at different points in their lives. These forces provide the context
for developmental differences in adult development & aging.
- Cohort: is a group of people born at the same point in time/ within a specific time span.
- Based on this notion of cohort, Baltes identified 3 sets influences that interact to produce
developmental change over the lifespan:
1.) Normative age-graded influences: experiences caused by biological, psychological and socio-
cultural forces that occur to most people of a particular age.
Biological examples: puberty, menopause.
Psychological examples: middle-aged person’s concern to socialize with younger generation.
Socio-cultural examples: marriage, retirement.
2.) Normative history-graded influences: events that most people in a specific culture experience at
the same time.
Biological examples: epidemics.
Psychological examples: stereotypes.
Socio-cultural examples: attitudes towards sexuality.
3.) Nonnormative influences: random/ rare events that may be important for a specific individual
but are NOT experienced by most people. May be favorable events, such as: winning the lottery or
unfavorable events, such as: a car accident or layoff.
CULTURE & ETHNICITY
- How do culture and ethnicity influence aging?
Culture & ethnicity jointly provide: status, social settings, living conditions and personal experiences
and they influence and are influenced by: biological, psychological and life-cycle developmental
forces.
- Culture:
- Definition: shared basic value orientations, norms, beliefs and customary habits and ways of living.
- Is a powerful influence because, it connects to biological forces through family lineage.
- Psychologically, culture shapes one’s core beliefs which can lead to ethnocentrism or the belief
2
, that one’s own culture is superior to others.
- Is important in Gerontology because, how people define: age, person and life course varies across
cultures.
- Ethnicity: an individual and collective sense of identity based on historical and cultural group
membership and related behaviours and beliefs.
- Ethnic group identities have both: solid & fluid properties.
- For example: terms referring to an ethnic group can change over time, for example terms like
coloured people and negroes and African Americans have all been used to describe Americans of
African ancestry.
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF AGE?
- Age is not a simple construct, it is quite complex.
- Aging is not a single process.
- Everyone’s experience of growing old is different.
- Everyone does not grow old in the same way.
- Primary aging:
- Definition: normal, disease-free development during adulthood.
- Changes in biological, psychological and socio-cultural or life-cycle processes in primary aging are
an inevitable part of the developmental process, such as: menopause, decline in reaction time and
loss of family and friends.
- Secondary aging:
- Definition: developmental changes that are related to disease, lifestyle and other environmentally
induced changes that are not inevitable, such as: pollution.
- Examples: progressive loss of intellectual abilities in Alzheimer’s disease and related forms of
dementia.
- Tertiary aging:
- Definition: the rapid losses that occur shortly before death.
- Example: phenomenon known as terminal drop, in which intellectual abilities show a marked
decline in the last few years before death.
Chronological age:
- Definition: a shorthand way to index time and organize events and data by using a commonly
understood standard: calendar time.
- When most of us think about age, we usually think of how long we have been around since birth –
this is a way of defining age chronologically.
- Chronological age represents age in terms of elapsed time.
Perceived age:
- Definition: refers to the age you think of yourself as.
- Relates to the saying: “You’re only as old as you feel.”
Biological age:
- Definition: assessed by measuring the functioning of the various vital, or life-limiting organ
systems, such as: the cardiovascular system.
Psychological age:
- Definition: refers to the functional level of psychological abilities people use to adapt to changing
environmental demands.
- Abilities include: memory, intelligence and feelings.
Sociocultural age:
- Definition: refers to the specific set of roles individuals adopt in relation to other members of the
society/culture to which they belong.
- Decisions, such as: when to get married, have children are often influenced by one’s sociocultural
age.
- These decisions play a role in determining one’s self-esteem and aspects of personality.
3
Textbook: Adult Development & Aging (8th edition) written by: John C. Cavanaugh & Fredda Blanchard-Fields
Chapter 1: Studying Adult Development and Aging
1.1 PERSPECTIVES ON ADULT DEVELOPMENT & AGING
- Perspectives about old age is changing: older adults are being looked at differently today.
- The baby boom generation (people born between 1946 and 1964) are the healthiest + most active
generation to reach old age in history!
They changed the way in which older adults are perceived and treated.
- Gerontology: the scientific study of aging from maturity through old age as well as the study of
older adults as a special group.
- Gerontology has changed our understanding of aging + the aging process.
- Aging reflects the individual differences you have come to expect across people as they change
over time.
- Yet, many MYTHS about old people persist. These myths of aging lead to negative stereotypes of
older people, which may result in ageism.
- Ageism: a form of discrimination against older adults based on their age.
- Examples of myths and negative stereotypes about Aging:
- Believing that old people are senile and are incapable of making decisions about their lives.
- When people are impatient with older adults in the grocery store checkout line.
- Dismissing al older person’s physical complaints with the question: “What do you expect for
someone your age?”
- The Life-Span Perspective: divides human development into 2 phases:
1. An early phase: childhood and adolescence
2. A later phase: young adulthood, middle age and old age
- The Life-Span Perspective enables one to view adulthood from a broad perspective.
- The Life-Span Perspective emphasizes that human development takes a lifetime to complete.
- According to the Life-Span Perspective: adult development & aging are complex phenomena that
CANNOT be understood within the scope of a single disciplinary approach.
- One of the most important perspectives on Life-Span development is that of Paul Baltes.
- Paul Baltes identified 4 key features of the Life-Span perspective:
1. Multidirectionality: Development involves both growth & decline. Ex: vocabulary may increase
but, reaction time may decrease.
2. Plasticity: One’s capacity is not predetermined or set in concrete many skills can be trained or
improved even in later life.
3. Historical context: Each individual develops within a particular set of circumstances determined by
the historical time in which you are born and the culture in which you grow up.
4. Multiple causation: Development results from a variety of sources. Development is shaped by:
biological, psychological, sociocultural and lifecycle forces.
- Baltes argued that life-span development consists of the dynamic interactions among: growth,
maintenance and loss regulation. He argues that there are 3 critical factors, that collectively form
the Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC) approach:
1. As people age, they select abilities deemed essential for functioning.
2. People optimize their behaviour by focusing on this limited set of abilities.
3. People learn to compensate for declines by designing workaround strategies.
- SOC thus explains how people shift more and more resources to maintain function and deal with
biologically related losses as we grow old, leaving fewer resources to be devoted to continued
growth.
- The Demographics of Aging:
- There have never been as many older adults alive as there are now.
1
,- By 2050, the number of older adults in both developed and developing countries will have
increased dramatically!
- As a result: this will place enormous pressure on: pension systems, health care and other human
services. Individuals will have higher tax burden in future and the growing strain on social services
will intensify.
- Demographers: people who study population trends.
- Population pyramid: a graphic technique used by Demographers to illustrate population changes.
- The Diversity of older adults:
- In terms of gender: older women outnumber older men.
- Better-educated people tend to live longer – due to higher incomes which give better access to
good healthcare and healthier lifestyles.
1.2 ISSUES IN STUDYING ADULT DEVELOPMENT & AGING:
- Human development can be viewed from the bio-psycho-social framework that shows that
human development results from interacting forces.
- The 4 main interacting forces that shape development according to Developmentalists:
1. Biological: all genetic and health-related factors that affect development. Ex. Menopause, facial
wrinkling + changes in major organ systems.
2. Psychological: all internal perceptual, cognitive, emotional and personality factors that affect
development. Collectively, psychological forces provide the characteristics we notice about people
that make them individuals.
3. Sociocultural: Interpersonal, societal, cultural and ethnic factors that affect development.
Sociocultural forces provide the overall contexts in which we develop.
4. Life cycle: reflect differences in how the same event/ combination of biological, psychological and
sociocultural forces affects people at different points in their lives. These forces provide the context
for developmental differences in adult development & aging.
- Cohort: is a group of people born at the same point in time/ within a specific time span.
- Based on this notion of cohort, Baltes identified 3 sets influences that interact to produce
developmental change over the lifespan:
1.) Normative age-graded influences: experiences caused by biological, psychological and socio-
cultural forces that occur to most people of a particular age.
Biological examples: puberty, menopause.
Psychological examples: middle-aged person’s concern to socialize with younger generation.
Socio-cultural examples: marriage, retirement.
2.) Normative history-graded influences: events that most people in a specific culture experience at
the same time.
Biological examples: epidemics.
Psychological examples: stereotypes.
Socio-cultural examples: attitudes towards sexuality.
3.) Nonnormative influences: random/ rare events that may be important for a specific individual
but are NOT experienced by most people. May be favorable events, such as: winning the lottery or
unfavorable events, such as: a car accident or layoff.
CULTURE & ETHNICITY
- How do culture and ethnicity influence aging?
Culture & ethnicity jointly provide: status, social settings, living conditions and personal experiences
and they influence and are influenced by: biological, psychological and life-cycle developmental
forces.
- Culture:
- Definition: shared basic value orientations, norms, beliefs and customary habits and ways of living.
- Is a powerful influence because, it connects to biological forces through family lineage.
- Psychologically, culture shapes one’s core beliefs which can lead to ethnocentrism or the belief
2
, that one’s own culture is superior to others.
- Is important in Gerontology because, how people define: age, person and life course varies across
cultures.
- Ethnicity: an individual and collective sense of identity based on historical and cultural group
membership and related behaviours and beliefs.
- Ethnic group identities have both: solid & fluid properties.
- For example: terms referring to an ethnic group can change over time, for example terms like
coloured people and negroes and African Americans have all been used to describe Americans of
African ancestry.
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF AGE?
- Age is not a simple construct, it is quite complex.
- Aging is not a single process.
- Everyone’s experience of growing old is different.
- Everyone does not grow old in the same way.
- Primary aging:
- Definition: normal, disease-free development during adulthood.
- Changes in biological, psychological and socio-cultural or life-cycle processes in primary aging are
an inevitable part of the developmental process, such as: menopause, decline in reaction time and
loss of family and friends.
- Secondary aging:
- Definition: developmental changes that are related to disease, lifestyle and other environmentally
induced changes that are not inevitable, such as: pollution.
- Examples: progressive loss of intellectual abilities in Alzheimer’s disease and related forms of
dementia.
- Tertiary aging:
- Definition: the rapid losses that occur shortly before death.
- Example: phenomenon known as terminal drop, in which intellectual abilities show a marked
decline in the last few years before death.
Chronological age:
- Definition: a shorthand way to index time and organize events and data by using a commonly
understood standard: calendar time.
- When most of us think about age, we usually think of how long we have been around since birth –
this is a way of defining age chronologically.
- Chronological age represents age in terms of elapsed time.
Perceived age:
- Definition: refers to the age you think of yourself as.
- Relates to the saying: “You’re only as old as you feel.”
Biological age:
- Definition: assessed by measuring the functioning of the various vital, or life-limiting organ
systems, such as: the cardiovascular system.
Psychological age:
- Definition: refers to the functional level of psychological abilities people use to adapt to changing
environmental demands.
- Abilities include: memory, intelligence and feelings.
Sociocultural age:
- Definition: refers to the specific set of roles individuals adopt in relation to other members of the
society/culture to which they belong.
- Decisions, such as: when to get married, have children are often influenced by one’s sociocultural
age.
- These decisions play a role in determining one’s self-esteem and aspects of personality.
3
