Middle Adulthood

• Primary aging


  Age-related physical changes based on biological factors, such as molecular and cellular changes, and oxidative damage
• Secondary aging


  Age-related physical changes due to controllable factors, such as an unhealthy lifestyle including lack of physical exercise and poor diet
• Physical changes in middle adulthood

  1. Hair: Follicles produce less melanin, causing hair to turn gray

  2. Skin: Dries out, prone to wrinkling, loss of muscle tone and fat causes face to appear flabby

  3. Sarcopenia: Loss of muscle mass and strength

  4. Lungs: Thinning of bones changes rib cage shape, weakening of diaphragm reduces lung capacity
• Sensory changes in middle adulthood

  • Vision: Presbyopia (loss of lens elasticity), drop in scotopic sensitivity, night vision affected, dry eye syndrome
  • Hearing: Loss of ability to hear higher frequencies, more common in men, exacerbated by noise exposure, smoking, health conditions
• Health concerns in middle adulthood

  • Heart disease
  • Hypertension
  • Cancer
• Climacteric


  Midlife transition when fertility declines, biologically based but impacted by environment
• Perimenopause


  Period of transition when a woman's ovaries stop releasing eggs and estrogen/progesterone production decreases
• Menopause


  12 months without menstruation, average age is 51
• Symptoms of perimenopause and menopause

  • Inability to fall asleep
  • Hot flashes
  • Disruptive to sleep and comfort levels
• Erectile dysfunction (ED)


  Inability to achieve or inconsistent ability to achieve an erection, more common with age, primarily due to medical conditions
• Brain functioning in middle adulthood

  • Maintains many abilities of young adults, gains new ones
  • Demonstrates plasticity and rewires itself
  • Older adults use more of their brains, show bilateralization, have increased white matter
  • Emotionally calmer, better able to manage emotions and negotiate social situations, focus more on positive information
• Fluid intelligence


  Capacity to learn new ways of solving problems and performing activities quickly and abstractly
• Crystallized intelligence


  Accumulated knowledge of the world acquired throughout our lives
• Fluid intelligence tends to decrease with age, while crystallized intelligence increases with age
• Cognitive Development in Middle Adulthood

  • Compared to younger and older adults, those in midlife with cognitive improvements tend to be more physically, cognitively, and socially active
• Fluid intelligence


  The capacity to learn new ways of solving problems and performing activities quickly and abstractly
• Crystallized intelligence


  The accumulated knowledge of the world we have acquired throughout our lives
• Crystallized intelligence increases with age, while fluid intelligence tends to decrease with age
• Older adults have more crystallized intelligence as reflected in semantic knowledge, vocabulary, and language
• Older adults generally outperform younger people on measures of history, geography, and even crossword puzzles, where crystallized intelligence is useful
• Wisdom


  The superior knowledge, slower and more complete processing style, and more sophisticated understanding of the world that gives older adults an advantage over the fluid intelligence of the young
• Midlife crisis


  A normal part of development where the person reevaluates previous commitments, makes dramatic changes, expresses previously ignored talents or aspirations, and feels more of a sense of urgency about life and its meaning
• Levinson's study on the midlife crisis has been criticized for its research methods, including small sample size, similar ages, and concerns about a cohort effect
• Stress


  A pattern of physical and psychological responses in an organism after it perceives a threatening event that disturbs its homeostasis and taxes its abilities to cope with the event
• Stressor


  A stimulus that causes stress in an organism
• General Adaptation Syndrome


  A three-phase model of stress that includes a mobilization of physiological resources phase, a coping phase, and an exhaustion phase
• Negative dispositions and personality traits have been strongly tied to an array of health risks
• Type A Behavior


  A pattern of being competitive, impatient, hostile, and time urgent, which is associated with double the risk of heart disease compared to Type B Behavior
• Problem-focused coping


  Actively addressing the event that is causing stress in an effort to solve the issue at hand
• Emotion-focused coping


  Regulating the emotions that come with stress
• Generativity


  Procreativity, productivity, and creativity, including the generation of new beings, new products, and new ideas, as well as self-generation concerned with further identity development
• Erikson believed that the stage of generativity, during which one establishes a family and career, was the longest of all the stages
• Stagnation


  Occurs when one is not active in generative matters, but can motivate a person to redirect energies into more meaningful activities
• Sandwich generation


  Adults who have at least one parent age 65 or older and are either raising their own children or providing support for their grown children
• Kinkeeping


  The person or persons in a family who keep the family connected and promote solidarity and continuity
• Empty nest


  The time period when children are grown up and have left home, which can create complex emotions, both positive and negative, for many parents
• Empty nest syndrome


  The great emotional distress experienced by parents, typically mothers, after their children have left home, linked to the absence of alternative roles for the parent in which they could establish their identity
• Boomerang kids


  Young adults who are returning to their parents' home after having lived independently outside the home