other and cognitive

• • -          CONTROL having a sense of control peaks in middle and then declines in late adulthood.
• -          MORTALITY RATES – infectious disease was the main cause of death until the middle of the twenties century.
• -          MENOPAUSE – usually during late 40’s or early 50’s when a woman’s menstrual periods cease.
• -          CHRONIIC DISEASE ­– are now the main causes of death for individuals in middle adulthood.
• -          CLIMACTERIC – term that is used to describe the midlife transition in which fertility declines.

   
• -          PERIMENOPAUSE – the transitional period from normal menstrual periods to no menstrual periods at all, which often takes up to 10 years.

   
• -          HORMONAL CHANGES IN MIDDLE-AGED-MEN – most men do not lose their capacity to father children but usually is a modest decline in their sexual hormone level and activity.
• -          TESTOSTERONE – production begins to decline about 1 percent a year during middle adulthood, and sperm count usually declines slowly, but men do not lose their fertility in, middle age.
• -          ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION (ED) – difficulty attaining or maintaining penile erection affects approximately 50 percent of men 40 to 70 years of age 75 percent of men in over 70 years.
• -          VIAGRA – main treatment for erectile dysfunction
• -          SEXUAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR – although the ability of men and women to function sexually shows little biological decline in middle adulthood, sexual activity usually occurs less frequently in middle than in early adulthood.
• Ø  JOHN HORN – argues that some abilities begin to decline in middle age while others increase.
• Ø  CRYSTALLIZED INTELLIGENCE – an individual’s accumulated information and verbal skills, continues to increase in middle adulthood.
• Ø  THE SEATTLE LONGITUDINAL STUDY – that involve extensive evaluation of intellectual abilities during adulthood was initiated by K. WARNER SCHALE.
• Ø  FLUID INTELLIGENCE – the ability to reason abstractly, begins to decline in middle adulthood.
• -          Participants gave been assessed at SEVEN-YEAR-INTERVALS since 1956: 1963, 1970, 1977, 1984, 1991, 2005, and 2012.
• Ø  The highest-level functioning for 4 of the six intellectual abilities (VERBAL ABILITY, VERBAL MEMORY, INDCUTIVE REASONING, AND SPATIAL ORIENTATION) occurred in middle adulthood.

   
• Ø  NUMERIC FACILITY AND PERCEPTUAL SPEED – declined during middle age

   
• Ø  PERCEPTUAL SPEED- showed the earliest decline, middle age was a time of PEAK PERFORMANCE for some aspects of both crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence.
• Ø  SPEED INFORMATION – perceptual speed begins in early adulthood and continues to decline in middle adulthood.
• Ø  MEMORY – verbal memory peaked during the fifties based on Seattle longitudinal studies, however, in some other studies, verbal memory has shown a decline in middle age, especially when assessed in cross-sectional studies.