Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Cognitive Functioning in OA
-multidimensionality & multidirectionality
-education, work, health
-use it or lose it
-training cognitive skills
-cognitive neuroscience & aging
Language Devt
Works & Retirement
-work
-retirement
-adjustment in retirement
Mental Health
-depression
-dementia, alzheimers, other afflictions
-fear of victimisation, crime, elder maltreatment
Religion
Key terms
cognitive mechanics
cognitive pragmatics
selective attention
divided attention
sustained attention
episodic memory
semantic memory
explicit memory
implicit memory
source memory
prospective memory
wisdom
major depression
dementia
Alzheimers
Multi-infract dementia
Parkinson disease
individuals cant retrieve familiar info but has a feeling that they should be
able to retrieve it
- Cognitive Resources: Working Memory & Perceptual Speed
Working memory mental workbench that allows individuals to manipulate &
assemble info when making decisions, solving probs, comprehending written &
spoken language; linked to short-term memory but places more emphasis on memory
as a place for mental work
- Decline in working memory in OA focuses on their less efficient inhibition in
preventing irrelevant info from entering working memory & their increased
distractibility
Perceptual
Speed ability to perform simple perceptual-motor tasks
- Individuals w/ low anxiety & high self-efficacy re: memory skills in everyday
contexts had better memory performance
- Non-cognitive factors: health, education, and socioeconomic status
- Conclusions abt Memory & Aging
Decline occurs primarily in episodic & working memory
Decline in perceptual speed is assoc. w memory decline
Successful aging= reducing & adapting memory decline
Decision Making
- older adults presence decision making skills reasonable well although age-related
decrease in memory will impair decision making. However, OA performed well when
decision making is not constrained by time pressures & when the decision is
meaningful to them
Wisdom expert knowledge abt practical aspects of life that permits excellent
judgement abt important matters
- wisdom revealed OA engaged in higher-order reasoning in social conflicts than
younger adults
The higher order reasoning activities: multiple perspectives, allowance for
compromise, recognising limits of ones knowledge
- High levels of wisdom are rare it requires practice, experience, or complex
skills
- Time from of late adolescence & early adulthood is main age window for wisdom to
emerge
- Factors other than age are critical for wisdom to develop life exp., having
wisdom-enhancing mentors, contribute to higher levels of wisdom,
people high in wisdom have values that consider welfare of there than self
- Personality-Related factors (openness to exp, generativity, creativity) are
better predictors of wisdom than cognitive factors (intelligence)
- Practical knowledge abt realities of life is also needed for wisdom
well in retirement
- Multi-Infract Dementia
vascular disease
Parkinson Disease dementia chronic, progressive disease characterised by muscle
tremors, slowing of movement, partial face paralysis
triggered by degeneration of dopamine-producing neurons in brain
- Dopamine is a neurotransmitter necessary for normal brain function
Main
treatment: Drugs that enhance effect of Dopamine