Chapter 15-16

• Middle adulthood


  A distinct stage of life between ages 40 and 65, with its own societal norms, roles, opportunities, and challenges
• Middle adulthood is marked by growing individual differences and multiplicity of life paths
• Many adults in the middle years feel a stable sense of control over their lives
• Middle adulthood is a time of reevaluating goals and aspirations and deciding how best to use the remaining part of the life span
• Sensory and psychomotor functioning in middle adulthood

  • Taste and smell begin to decline
  • Hearing loss (presbycusis) accelerates after age 55, especially in men
  • Visual problems start to occur (near vision, dynamic vision, sensitivity to light, visual search, speed of processing visual information)
  • Lens of the eye becomes less flexible (presbyopia)
  • Myopia (nearsightedness) increases
  • Touch sensitivity begins to decrease around age 45
  • Muscle strength and endurance decrease
  • Manual dexterity becomes less efficient after mid-30s
  • Reaction time slows gradually throughout adulthood
• Structural and systemic changes in middle adulthood

  • Skin becomes less taut and smooth
  • Hair becomes thinner and grayer
  • Weight gain and height loss due to fat accumulation and intervertebral disk shrinkage
  • Bone density decreases, especially in women in 50s and 60s
  • Heart pumps more slowly and irregularly in mid-50s
  • Heart disease becomes more common
  • Vital capacity diminishes from age 40
  • Temperature regulation and immune response weaken
  • Sleep becomes less deep
• Menopause


  A process where a woman permanently stops menstruating and can no longer conceive a child, typically occurring between ages 45 and 55
• Perimenopause


  The first year after the end of menstruation, a period of several years during which a woman experiences physiological changes of menopause
• Changes in male sexual functioning in middle adulthood

  • Testosterone levels decrease slowly after 30s
  • Sperm count declines with age
  • Erectile dysfunction becomes more common
  • Frequency of sexual activity and satisfaction with sex life diminish gradually
• Hypertension


  Chronically high blood pressure, an increasing concern in midlife and a risk factor for cardiovascular and kidney disease
• Diabetes


  A disease in which the body does not produce or properly use insulin, leading to high blood sugar levels
• Middle-aged people with low socioeconomic status tend to have poorer health, shorter life expectancy, lower well-being, and restricted access to health care
• Stress


  A response to physical or psychological demands
• Stressors


  Perceived environmental demands that may produce stress
• Stress responses in middle adulthood

  • Middle-aged people are better equipped to cope with stress
  • Women tend to report more extreme stress than men
  • Fight-or-flight response may be primarily masculine
  • Tend and befriend response may be primarily feminine
• Fluid intelligence


  The ability to solve novel problems that require little or no previous knowledge
• Crystallized intelligence


  The ability to remember and use information acquired over a lifetime
• The distinctiveness of adult cognition

  • Mature adults show increasing competence in solving problems in their chosen fields due to specialized knowledge or expertise (a form of crystallized intelligence)
  • Encapsulation - progressive dedication and fluid thinking to specific knowledge systems, making knowledge more readily accessible
  • Middle-aged people take somewhat longer to process new information but compensate with judgment developed from experience
• Integrative thought


  Mature adults integrate logic with intuition and emotion, interpreting information through the lens of their life experience and previous learning
• Phased retirement


  A practice where people reduce work hours or days, gradually moving into retirement over a number of years
• Bridge employment


  A practice where people switch to another company or a new line of work
• Adults can actively affect their future cognitive development by the occupational choices they make
• Many adults go to college at a nontraditional age or participate in other educational activities, often to improve work-related skills and knowledge
• Literacy training is an urgent need globally
• Intuition and emotion


  They interpret what they read, see, or hear in terms of its meaning for them. Instead of accepting something at face value, they filter it through their life experience and previous learning.
• Phased retirement


  A practice wherein people may reduce work hours or days, gradually moving into retirement over a number of years
• Bridge employment


  A practice wherein people switch to another company or a new line of work
• Those who constantly seek more stimulating opportunities are likely to remain mentally sharp
• Literacy


  In an adult, it is the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, achieve goals, and develop knowledge and potential
• Change and continuity in the middle years must be seen in the perspective of the entire life span
• There are differences between early and late middle age
• Lives do not progress in isolation, individual pathways intersect or collide with those that surround them (family, friends, coworkers)
• Sigmund Freud


  Saw no point in psychotherapy for people over 50 because he believed personality is permanently formed by that age
• Abraham Maslow


  Looked on middle age as an opportunity for positive change. The full realization of human potential (self-actualization) can come only with maturity
• Carl Rogers


  Full human functioning requires a constant, lifelong process of bringing the self in harmony with experience. Also looked on middle age as an opportunity for positive change
• Carl Jung: Individuation & Transcendence

  Healthy midlife development calls for individuation – the emergence of the true self through balancing or integrating conflicting parts of the personality. At midlife, people shift their preoccupation to their inner, spiritual selves. Both men and women seek a union of opposites by expressing their previously disowned aspects
• Erik Erikson: Generativity vs. Stagnation


  Erikson saw the years around age 40 as the time when people enter their 7th normative stage. Generativity is the concern of mature adults for establishing and guiding the next generation, perpetuating oneself through the one's influence on those to follow. People who do not find an outlet for generativity become self-absorbed or stagnant (inactive or lifeless)
• Quarterlife crisis


  Occurs in the midtwenties to early thirties as emerging adults seek to settle into satisfying work and relationships
• Midlife crisis


  A stressful period triggered by review and reevaluation of one's life brought on by one's awareness of mortality. One of life's turning points – a psychological transition that involve a significant change or transformation in the perceived meaning, purpose, or direction of a person's life
• Midlife review


  Introspective examination that often occurs in middle age, leading to reappraisal and revision of values and priorities. May bring regret over failure to achieve a dream or keener awareness of developmental deadlines – time constraints on, for example, the ability to have a child or make up with an estranged friend or family member