LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT END OF COURSE EXAM
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS GRADED A+
✔✔Maximum life span - ✔✔The oldest possible age that members of a species can live
under ideal circumstances. For humans, that age is approximately 122 years.
✔✔Average life expectancy - ✔✔The number of years the average newborn in a
particular population group is likely to live.
✔✔Self theories - ✔✔Theories of late adulthood that emphasize the core self, or the
search to maintain one's integrity and identity.
✔✔Integrity vs. despair - ✔✔The final stage of Erikson's developmental sequence, in
which older adults tend to seek to integrate their unique experiences with their vision of
community.
✔✔Compulsive hoarding - ✔✔The urge to accumulate and hold on to familiar objects
and possessions, sometimes to the point of their becoming health and/or safety
hazards. This impulse tends to increase with age.
✔✔Positivity effects - ✔✔The tendency or elderly people to perceive, prefer, and
remember positive images and experiences more than negative ones.
✔✔Stratification theories - ✔✔theories that emphasize that social forces, particularly
those related to a person's social stratum or social category, limit individual choices and
affect a person's ability to function in late adulthood because past stratification
continues to limit life in various ways.
✔✔Disengagement theory - ✔✔The view that aging makes a person's social sphere
increasingly narrow, resulting in role relinquishment withdrawal and passivity.
✔✔Activity theory - ✔✔The view that elderly people want and need to remain active in
social spheres- with relatives, friends, and community groups-and become withdrawn
only unwillingly, as a result of ageism.
✔✔Activities in late adulthood* - ✔✔Paid work
Retirement
Volunteer work
✔✔Age in place - ✔✔Remaining in the same home and community on later life,
adjusting but not leaving when health fades.
, ✔✔Naturally occurring retirement community (NORC) - ✔✔A neighborhood or
apartment complex whose population is mostly retired people who moved to the
location as younger adults and never left.
✔✔AARP - ✔✔A U.S. organization of people 50 and older that advocated for the
elderly. It was originally called the American Association of Retirement Persons, but
now only the initials AARP are used, since members need not be retired.
✔✔Final responsibility theory - ✔✔The obligations of adult children to care for their
aging parents.
✔✔Remote/distant grandparents - ✔✔Emotionally distant from their grandchildren. They
are esteemed elders who are honored, respected, and obeyed, expecting to get help
whenever they need.
✔✔Compassionate/fun-loving grandparents - ✔✔Entertain and "spoil" their
grandchildren-especially in ways, or for reasons, that the parents would not.
✔✔Involved grandparents - ✔✔Active in the day-to-day lives of their grandchildren.
They live near them and see them daily.
✔✔Surrogate grandparents - ✔✔Raise their grandchildren, usually because the parents
are unable or unwilling to do so.
✔✔Frail elderly - ✔✔People older than 65, and often older than 85, who are physically
infirm, very ill or cognitively disabled.
✔✔Assisted living - ✔✔A living arrangement for elderly people that combines privacy
and independence with medical supervision.
✔✔Thanatology - ✔✔The study of death and dying, especially of the social and
emotional aspects
✔✔Terror management theory (TMT) - ✔✔The idea that people adopt culture values
and moral principles in order to cope with their fear of death. This system of beliefs
protects individuals from anxiety about their mortality and bolsters their self-esteem, so
they react harshly when other people go against any of the moral principles involved.
✔✔Good death - ✔✔At the end of a long life, peaceful, quick, in familiar surroundings,
with family and friends present, without pain, confusion and discomfort.
✔✔Stages of Dying - ✔✔Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS GRADED A+
✔✔Maximum life span - ✔✔The oldest possible age that members of a species can live
under ideal circumstances. For humans, that age is approximately 122 years.
✔✔Average life expectancy - ✔✔The number of years the average newborn in a
particular population group is likely to live.
✔✔Self theories - ✔✔Theories of late adulthood that emphasize the core self, or the
search to maintain one's integrity and identity.
✔✔Integrity vs. despair - ✔✔The final stage of Erikson's developmental sequence, in
which older adults tend to seek to integrate their unique experiences with their vision of
community.
✔✔Compulsive hoarding - ✔✔The urge to accumulate and hold on to familiar objects
and possessions, sometimes to the point of their becoming health and/or safety
hazards. This impulse tends to increase with age.
✔✔Positivity effects - ✔✔The tendency or elderly people to perceive, prefer, and
remember positive images and experiences more than negative ones.
✔✔Stratification theories - ✔✔theories that emphasize that social forces, particularly
those related to a person's social stratum or social category, limit individual choices and
affect a person's ability to function in late adulthood because past stratification
continues to limit life in various ways.
✔✔Disengagement theory - ✔✔The view that aging makes a person's social sphere
increasingly narrow, resulting in role relinquishment withdrawal and passivity.
✔✔Activity theory - ✔✔The view that elderly people want and need to remain active in
social spheres- with relatives, friends, and community groups-and become withdrawn
only unwillingly, as a result of ageism.
✔✔Activities in late adulthood* - ✔✔Paid work
Retirement
Volunteer work
✔✔Age in place - ✔✔Remaining in the same home and community on later life,
adjusting but not leaving when health fades.
, ✔✔Naturally occurring retirement community (NORC) - ✔✔A neighborhood or
apartment complex whose population is mostly retired people who moved to the
location as younger adults and never left.
✔✔AARP - ✔✔A U.S. organization of people 50 and older that advocated for the
elderly. It was originally called the American Association of Retirement Persons, but
now only the initials AARP are used, since members need not be retired.
✔✔Final responsibility theory - ✔✔The obligations of adult children to care for their
aging parents.
✔✔Remote/distant grandparents - ✔✔Emotionally distant from their grandchildren. They
are esteemed elders who are honored, respected, and obeyed, expecting to get help
whenever they need.
✔✔Compassionate/fun-loving grandparents - ✔✔Entertain and "spoil" their
grandchildren-especially in ways, or for reasons, that the parents would not.
✔✔Involved grandparents - ✔✔Active in the day-to-day lives of their grandchildren.
They live near them and see them daily.
✔✔Surrogate grandparents - ✔✔Raise their grandchildren, usually because the parents
are unable or unwilling to do so.
✔✔Frail elderly - ✔✔People older than 65, and often older than 85, who are physically
infirm, very ill or cognitively disabled.
✔✔Assisted living - ✔✔A living arrangement for elderly people that combines privacy
and independence with medical supervision.
✔✔Thanatology - ✔✔The study of death and dying, especially of the social and
emotional aspects
✔✔Terror management theory (TMT) - ✔✔The idea that people adopt culture values
and moral principles in order to cope with their fear of death. This system of beliefs
protects individuals from anxiety about their mortality and bolsters their self-esteem, so
they react harshly when other people go against any of the moral principles involved.
✔✔Good death - ✔✔At the end of a long life, peaceful, quick, in familiar surroundings,
with family and friends present, without pain, confusion and discomfort.
✔✔Stages of Dying - ✔✔Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance
