Kathleen Stassen Berger

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Part VIII

Late Adulthood: Cognitive Development

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Usual: Information

Processing After Age 65

The impaired Dementia

The Optimal: New Cognitive

Development

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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65

• information-processing approach– breaking down cognition into the steps of • input (sensing)• storage (memory)• program (control process)• output• “a perspective that compares human thinking processes, by analogy, to computer analysis of data, including sensory input, connections, stored memories, and output” (Chapter 6)

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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65

• Memory–storage refers to memory in the information-processing model of cognition

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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65

• Analysis–an aspect of impaired analysis is that some elderly are more likely to stick to preconceived ideas rather than consider and change their minds

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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65

• Retrieval–another control process, the ability to recall the name of childhood acquaintance, worsens with age

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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65• Reminding People of What They Know

– priming• preparation that makes it easier to perform some action—it is easier to retrieve an item from memory if we are given a clue about it beforehand

– explicit memory• memory that is easy to retrieve on demand (as in a specific test), usually with words

• most explicit memory involves consciously learned words, data, and concepts

– implicit memory• unconscious or automatic memory that is usually stored via habits, emotional responses, routine procedures, and various sensations

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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65

• Staying Healthy and Alert–secondary aging—illness and conditions— that affect one person but not another•secondary aging is a major reason for the remarkable variation in intellectual ability between one older person and another

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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65

• Beyond Ageism

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The Impaired: Dementia• Loss of intellectual ability in elderly people has

traditionally been called senility.– dementia

•irreversible loss of intellectual functioning caused by organic brain damage or disease—dementia becomes more common with age, but it is abnormal and pathological even in the very old

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The Impaired: Dementia• Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)

– the most common cause of dementia, characterized by gradual deterioration of memory and personality and marked by the information of plaques of beta-amyloid protein and tangles in the brain

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Alzheimer's

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Alzheimer's

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The Impaired: Dementia• Risk Factors for Alzheimer’s Disease

– gender, ethnicity, and especially age affect a person’s odds of developing Alzheimer’s disease

– women are at greater risk than men– fewer East Asians than Europeans develop the disorder

– less common among those of African descent, but life expectancy is far lower in Africa than in any other continent and diagnosis of illness in late adulthood is less certain

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The Impaired: Dementia• Stages: From Confusion to Death–Alzheimer’s disease usually runs through a progressive course of five identifiable stages, beginning with forgetfulness and ending in death

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The Impaired: Dementia• Stages: From Confusion to Death

– stage 1 – confused with normal aging– stage 2 – generalized confusion—deficits in concentration and short-term memory

– stage 3 – memory loss becomes dangerous – stage 4 – full-time care– stage 5 – unresponsive, no longer talking

stages take 10 to 15 years

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The Impaired: Dementia• Many Strokes

– the second most common cause of dementia is a stroke

– repeated brain damage leads to:•vascular dementia (VaD), also called multi-infarct dementia (MID)– a form of dementia characterized by sporadic, and progressive, loss of intellectual functioning caused by repeated infarcts, or temporary obstructions of blood vessels, which prevent sufficient blood from reaching the brain

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The Impaired: Dementia• Subcortical Dementias

– forms of dementia that begin with impairments in motor ability (which is governed by the sub-cortex) and produce cognitive impairment in later stages—Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and multiple sclerosis are subcortical dementias

– Parkinson’s Disease•a chronic, progressive disease that is characterized by muscle tremor and rigidity, and sometimes dementia, caused by a reduction of dopamine production in the brain

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The Impaired: Dementia• Reversible Dementia–dementia caused by medication, inadequate nutrition, alcohol abuse, depression, or other mental illness can sometimes be reversed

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The Impaired: Dementia• Psychological Illness

– elderly people have a lower incidence of psychological disorders—the rate of anxiety, antisocial personality disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and depression are lower after age 65

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Coping with aging

• The Life Review–an examination of one’s own part in life, engaged in by many elderly people

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The Optimal: New Cognitive Development

• Wisdom– a cognitive perspective characterized by a broad, practical, comprehensive approach to life’s problems, reflecting timeless truths rather than immediate expediency—seems to be more common in the elderly than in the young