Objective 24| Discuss the characteristics of emerging adulthood. Emerging adulthood refers to the period from about age 18 to the mid-twenties, when many young people in Western cultures are no longer adolescents but have not yet achieved full independence as adults. During this time, many young people attend college or work but continue to live in their parents’ home. In the United States, the age of first marriage now extends into the mid-twenties for men and women.
Objective 25| Identify the major physical changes that occur in middle adulthood. Muscular strength, reaction time, sensory abilities, and cardiac output begin to decline in the late twenties. Around age50, menopause ends women’s period of fertility, but they may continue to enjoy a satisfying sex life. Most women do not experience depression or other psychological problems with menopause. Men do not undergo a similar sharp drop in hormone levels or fertility.
Objective 26| Compare life expectancy in the mid-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and discuss changes in sensory abilities and health (including frequency of dementia) in older adults.Worldwide, life expectancy has increased from 49 years in the mid-twentieth century to 67 in the early twenty-first century, and it exceeds 80 in some developed countries. Women outlive men and outnumber men at most ages past early infancy. In late adulthood, especially after age 70, hearing, distance perception, and the sense of smell diminish, as do muscle strength, reaction time, and stamina. As the body’s immune system weakens, the elderly become vulnerable to life-threatening diseases such as cancer and pneumonia, but short-term ailments are fewer. Neural processes slow, especially for complex tasks, and by about age 80, the brain shrinks by about 5percent. Physical exercise can stimulate the development of some new brain cells and connections. With age, the incidence of dementia—including the progressive deterioration of Alzheimer’s disease—increases, doubling every five years from the early sixties on. Dementia is not a normal part of the aging process.
Objective 27| Assess the impact of aging on recall and recognition in adulthood. The ability to recall new information declines during early and middle adulthood, but the ability to recognize such information does not. Older adults recall meaningful information more easily than meaningless information, but they may take longer to produce the words describing what they know. Prospective memory (“remember to . . .”) remains strong when cues are available, but without reminder cues, time-based and habitual tasks are vulnerable to memory loss.
Objective 28| Summarize the contributions of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies to our understanding of the normal effects of aging on adult intelligence. Cross-sectional studies (comparing people of different ages with one another) suggested that intelligence declines steadily after early adulthood, but this research failed to consider generational differences in education and other life experiences. Longitudinal studies (retesting the same people over a long period of time) suggested intelligence was stable until very late in life. But longitudinal research failed to account for those who dropped out of the studies, who may have been less intelligent than the survivors or in poor health, leaving an above-average group of participants in late life. Today’s view is that fluid intelligence (the ability to reason speedily and abstractly) declines in later life, but crystallized intelligence (accumulated knowledge and skills) does not.
Objective 29| Explain why the path of adult development need not be tightly linked to one’s chronological age. Psychologists doubt that adults pass through an orderly sequence of age-bound stages, some accompanied by times of crisis, such as a midlife crisis in the early forties. Life crises tend to be triggered by major events (such as divorce) or chance occurrences (such as meeting a future partner) rather than predictable stages. Stage-defined crises also imply rigid timing of social events, and research shows that the social clock (the cultural prescription of the “right time” for such events) varies from place to place and from time to time.
Objective 30| Discuss the importance of love, marriage, and children in adulthood, and comment on the contribution of one’s work to feelings of self-satisfaction. Love and work are the defining themes in adult life. Evolutionary psychologists believe commitment had survival value for our ancestors, in that parents who stayed together, cooperated, and raised children to a child-bearing age had a better chance of passing along their genes to posterity. The likelihood of divorce has doubled over the past 40 years, partly because of women’s increased economic independence and partly because of men’s and women’s increased expectations of acceptable qualities in a life partner. Cohabitation before marriage has correlated with higher rates of divorce and marital dysfunction. Most people still expect to marry, and those who do tend to be happier than their single counterparts. The birth of a child is usually a welcome event but may strain a couple’s financial and emotional resources. Settling into a career path is difficult and time consuming, but satisfying work (that fits your interests and gives a sense of competence and accomplishment) also correlates with life satisfaction.
Objective 31| Describe trends in people’s life satisfaction across the life span. Well-being and people’s feelings of satisfaction are stable across the life span. Studies show that as we age, highs may be less high and lows less low, but the average level of satisfaction remains stable.
Objective 32| Describe the range of reactions to the death of loved one. There is no “normal” reaction or series of grief stages after the death of a loved one. Grief is most severe when the death is sudden or before its expected time, as in the death of a child. People who in old age achieve a sense of integrity, in Erikson’s terms, may meet death by affirming that their own life was meaningful and worthwhile.