Status: Completed
In this assignment, you will critically evaluate articles in the field of adult development. Each week, you will read two articles from the Annual Editions: Human Development textbook (see the weekly readings for the chosen articles). For each article, do the following: Write a summary. Describe the main points of the article and how it relates to the week’s course and text readings. Evaluate the article on the basis of your own thoughts and perspectives on the topic covered.
Date Posted: 17/09/2012
Category: General
Due Date: 21/09/2012
Due Date: 21/09/2012
Instruction
In this assignment, you will critically evaluate articles in the field of adult development. Each week, you will read two articles from the Annual Editions: Human Development textbook (see the weekly readings for the chosen articles). For each article, do the following:
Write a summary.
Describe the main points of the article and how it relates to the week’s course and text readings.
Evaluate the article on the basis of your own thoughts and perspectives on the topic covered.
Article one
Article 35 This Is Your Brain. Aging.
SHARON BEGLEY
Science is reshaping what we know about getting older. (The news is better than you think.)
Over the years, Timothy Salthouse has tested more than 8,000 people in his lab at the University of Virginia, assessing their memories, problem-solving skills, and other mental functions to see how the brain fares with age. The results have been predictably dismal: after age 25 or so, it's pretty much all downhill. (No news there: Plato wrote that when a man grows old, he “can no more learn much than he can run much.â€) But something bothered Salthouse about the results, and on a late spring day in his office at the Russell Sage Foundation on New York's Upper East Side, where he has been a visiting scholar this year, he whips out a graph that captures the paradox.
The graph shows two roller-coastering lines. One represents the proportion of people of each age who are in the top 25 percent on a standard lab test of reasoning ability—thinking. The other shows the proportion of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies of each age. Reasoning ability peaks at about age 28 and then plummets, tracing that well-known plunge that makes those older than 30 (OK, fine, 40) cringe: only 6 percent of top scorers are in their 50s, and only 4 percent are in their 60s. But the age distribution of CEOs is an almost perfect mirror image: it peaks just before age 60. About half are older than 55. And the number under 40 is about zero.
One can make a cheap joke out of this (so that's why AIG, GM, Lehman, et al. tanked: the smartest people weren't running them), but Salthouse deduces more counterintuitive, and hopeful, lessons. The first is that in real life, rather than in psych labs, people rely on mental abilities that stand up very well to age and discover work-arounds for the mental skills that do fade. The second is that some mental abilities actually improve with age, and one of them may be the inchoate thing called wisdom, which is not a bad thing to have when running a company. Little of the gloom-and-doom conventional wisdom about what happens to the brain as we age, says Salthouse, “is based on well-established empirical evidence.†Instead, he says, much of it seems to be “influenced as much by the authors' preconceptions and attitudes as by systematic evaluation†of solid data.
Insights like that are producing a dramatic, and hopeful, rethinking of what happens to the mind and brain as we age. Some of the earlier bad-news findings are being questioned as scientists discover that the differences between today's 20-year-old brains and 80-year-old brains reflect something other than simple age, and instead have to do with how people live their lives. And a deeper understanding of normal cognitive aging is producing interventions that, because they target the cell-level brain changes that accompany aging, promise to be more effective than memory exercises and crossword puzzles.
A deeper understanding of normal cognitive aging is producing interventions that promise to be more effective than memory exercises and crossword puzzles.
Take the claim that brain volume shrinks beginning in our 30s. Earlier studies suggested that the prefrontal cortex (just behind the forehead) takes the greatest hit; this is the region responsible for executive function such as forethought, reasoning, and “fluid†intelligence—the ability to figure out, for instance, which letter best continues the sequence G-B-F-C-E. But those data, it turns out, may be skewed by the inclusion of people who have very early dementia—so early that they have no symptoms, explains neuroscientist John Morrison of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, but still have neuronal loss and thus volume loss in their prefrontal cortex. If only truly healthy people were studied, there might be no such volume loss, he says.
Earlier studies also found that myelination, the fatty insultion around neurons, peaks in our late 20s and then declines. Because myelin allows electrical signals to travel through the brain more quickly and efficiently, its loss means it takes longer to connect a face with a name, a book with an author, or any other facts. Its loss also makes the brain “noisier,†explains neuroscientist Henry Mahncke of Posit Science: “It's like a radio that is no longer precisely tuned to a station. It takes the brain more effort to find that signal, and that takes resources away from memory and thinking.†But myelination loss, according to new research, should come with an asterisk. Most of it seems to occur on one specific part of neurons—the part responsible for learning new things. The part responsible for long-term memory shows no such loss.
In fact, a study of rhesus monkeys published this month shows how well the aging brain holds up. The animals' prefrontal cortex indeed loses “dendritic spines,†tiny protrusions that, acting as the brain's wide receivers, catch the neurotransmitters that carry signals from other neurons. But there are two kinds of spines in monkeys as well as people. Small, thin ones are responsible for learning and remembering new things (where did I park my car?), and short, stubby ones are responsible for recalling things we've known for years. The brain loses some 45 percent of the first kind—and zero of the second kind, Morrison and colleagues reported in June in the Journal of Neuroscience.
That would account for why we have trouble with new memories as we age but not with our core knowledge. “We hypothesize that expertise and knowledge are coded in the synapses and spines that are not lost with age,†says Morrison. “This may be how the brain retains what it learned decades ago, and why a professor of cell biology can teach well into his 80s.†It may also be why, although most people's ability to reason and solve novel problems declines with age, knowledge holds up just fine, with vocabulary increasing through at least age 60. Emotional intelligence, social skills, and self-control generally improve with age, too.
Article two
Article 33 Healthy Aging in Later Life
JILL DUBA ONEDERA
FRED STICKLE
There are many ways in which to describe aging by associating negative factors with growing older (Cuddy, Norton, & Fiske, 2005). In fact, as you are reading this, you probably can mentally note numerous negative factors or disadvantages associated with aging. There are also numerous positive factors associated with the aging process. In this article, several positive factors or ways in which persons can age successfully will be presented.
Positive Factors Associated with Healthy Aging
Certainly, perceptions of aging might contribute to the overall success and satisfaction of growing older (Bowling, 1993). Despite many myths and stereotypes about aging, there are many advantages associated with aging (Knight, 2004). Such advantages include psychological and mental development as well as continued social engagement and intellectual stimulation. In the following section, both of these factors will be briefly discussed.
Psychological and Mental Development with Age
The later years, defined as age 65 or older (Himes, 2001), can be a period of continued psychological growth during which people adapt to new roles and discover creative outlets for their leisure time as well as prepare themselves for the end of life (Lewittes, 1989; Medinger & Varghese, 1981). Upon entering this stage, adults begin to assert the competence and creativity attained during middle adulthood, while also giving additional thought to life's meaning (Knight, 2004). That is, adults may begin to apply the wealth of their life experiences, their perspectives on time, and their adaptations to life crises to personally satisfying answers to the most fundamental of existential questions (Bohlmeijer, Valenkamp, Westerhof, Smit, & Cuijpers, 2005).
Memory, reasoning, information, problem-solving abilities, and mental rigidity or fluidity can influence the capacity of older adults to introspect, assess personal past history, and make plans for the future (Knight, 2004). Through encounters with diverse experiences, decision making, parenting, other forms of tutoring or mentoring of younger generations, and efforts to formulate a personal philosophy, adults can reach new levels of conscious thought (Coleman, Ivani-Chalian, & Robinson, 1999). The accumulation of experiences throughout each older person's life also undoubtedly adds to the framework and self-evaluation of one's life. With such experiences, it may become easier to accept and realize that change, whether linear or cyclic, is a basic element of life at both individual and social levels. As a witness to these changes and varied experiences, older persons exercising positive and hopeful attitudes can aid them in gaining special perspectives on conditions of continuity and change within their culture that can help them shape their own lives (Collings, 2001; Kenel, 2005). In the process of developing a psychohistorical perspective, very old adults can develop a personal understanding of stability and change, effects of history on individual lives, and one's place in the chain of evolution (Haight & Michel, 1998).
Older persons also share a unique place in the process of psychosocial evolution. As parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents, individuals are able to see their lines of descent continue into the fourth generation (Fallon, 1998; Walsh, 1988). Furthermore, older persons are in unique positions that allow them to examine and reflect on how each generation that followed them has added to existing knowledge as well as value bases (Troll, 1996). With these observations and reflections, older persons can choose to embrace the timeless role of keeping family members connected to the past as they knew it by maintaining the value of the oral tradition of history and storytelling. With each story, new connections can be made to the distant past (Knight, 2004). Finally, a greater investment in the future may develop as the very old see in their great-grandchildren the concrete extension of their ancestry three generations into the future.
Write a summary.
Describe the main points of the article and how it relates to the week’s course and text readings.
Evaluate the article on the basis of your own thoughts and perspectives on the topic covered.
Article one
Article 35 This Is Your Brain. Aging.
SHARON BEGLEY
Science is reshaping what we know about getting older. (The news is better than you think.)
Over the years, Timothy Salthouse has tested more than 8,000 people in his lab at the University of Virginia, assessing their memories, problem-solving skills, and other mental functions to see how the brain fares with age. The results have been predictably dismal: after age 25 or so, it's pretty much all downhill. (No news there: Plato wrote that when a man grows old, he “can no more learn much than he can run much.â€) But something bothered Salthouse about the results, and on a late spring day in his office at the Russell Sage Foundation on New York's Upper East Side, where he has been a visiting scholar this year, he whips out a graph that captures the paradox.
The graph shows two roller-coastering lines. One represents the proportion of people of each age who are in the top 25 percent on a standard lab test of reasoning ability—thinking. The other shows the proportion of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies of each age. Reasoning ability peaks at about age 28 and then plummets, tracing that well-known plunge that makes those older than 30 (OK, fine, 40) cringe: only 6 percent of top scorers are in their 50s, and only 4 percent are in their 60s. But the age distribution of CEOs is an almost perfect mirror image: it peaks just before age 60. About half are older than 55. And the number under 40 is about zero.
One can make a cheap joke out of this (so that's why AIG, GM, Lehman, et al. tanked: the smartest people weren't running them), but Salthouse deduces more counterintuitive, and hopeful, lessons. The first is that in real life, rather than in psych labs, people rely on mental abilities that stand up very well to age and discover work-arounds for the mental skills that do fade. The second is that some mental abilities actually improve with age, and one of them may be the inchoate thing called wisdom, which is not a bad thing to have when running a company. Little of the gloom-and-doom conventional wisdom about what happens to the brain as we age, says Salthouse, “is based on well-established empirical evidence.†Instead, he says, much of it seems to be “influenced as much by the authors' preconceptions and attitudes as by systematic evaluation†of solid data.
Insights like that are producing a dramatic, and hopeful, rethinking of what happens to the mind and brain as we age. Some of the earlier bad-news findings are being questioned as scientists discover that the differences between today's 20-year-old brains and 80-year-old brains reflect something other than simple age, and instead have to do with how people live their lives. And a deeper understanding of normal cognitive aging is producing interventions that, because they target the cell-level brain changes that accompany aging, promise to be more effective than memory exercises and crossword puzzles.
A deeper understanding of normal cognitive aging is producing interventions that promise to be more effective than memory exercises and crossword puzzles.
Take the claim that brain volume shrinks beginning in our 30s. Earlier studies suggested that the prefrontal cortex (just behind the forehead) takes the greatest hit; this is the region responsible for executive function such as forethought, reasoning, and “fluid†intelligence—the ability to figure out, for instance, which letter best continues the sequence G-B-F-C-E. But those data, it turns out, may be skewed by the inclusion of people who have very early dementia—so early that they have no symptoms, explains neuroscientist John Morrison of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, but still have neuronal loss and thus volume loss in their prefrontal cortex. If only truly healthy people were studied, there might be no such volume loss, he says.
Earlier studies also found that myelination, the fatty insultion around neurons, peaks in our late 20s and then declines. Because myelin allows electrical signals to travel through the brain more quickly and efficiently, its loss means it takes longer to connect a face with a name, a book with an author, or any other facts. Its loss also makes the brain “noisier,†explains neuroscientist Henry Mahncke of Posit Science: “It's like a radio that is no longer precisely tuned to a station. It takes the brain more effort to find that signal, and that takes resources away from memory and thinking.†But myelination loss, according to new research, should come with an asterisk. Most of it seems to occur on one specific part of neurons—the part responsible for learning new things. The part responsible for long-term memory shows no such loss.
In fact, a study of rhesus monkeys published this month shows how well the aging brain holds up. The animals' prefrontal cortex indeed loses “dendritic spines,†tiny protrusions that, acting as the brain's wide receivers, catch the neurotransmitters that carry signals from other neurons. But there are two kinds of spines in monkeys as well as people. Small, thin ones are responsible for learning and remembering new things (where did I park my car?), and short, stubby ones are responsible for recalling things we've known for years. The brain loses some 45 percent of the first kind—and zero of the second kind, Morrison and colleagues reported in June in the Journal of Neuroscience.
That would account for why we have trouble with new memories as we age but not with our core knowledge. “We hypothesize that expertise and knowledge are coded in the synapses and spines that are not lost with age,†says Morrison. “This may be how the brain retains what it learned decades ago, and why a professor of cell biology can teach well into his 80s.†It may also be why, although most people's ability to reason and solve novel problems declines with age, knowledge holds up just fine, with vocabulary increasing through at least age 60. Emotional intelligence, social skills, and self-control generally improve with age, too.
Article two
Article 33 Healthy Aging in Later Life
JILL DUBA ONEDERA
FRED STICKLE
There are many ways in which to describe aging by associating negative factors with growing older (Cuddy, Norton, & Fiske, 2005). In fact, as you are reading this, you probably can mentally note numerous negative factors or disadvantages associated with aging. There are also numerous positive factors associated with the aging process. In this article, several positive factors or ways in which persons can age successfully will be presented.
Positive Factors Associated with Healthy Aging
Certainly, perceptions of aging might contribute to the overall success and satisfaction of growing older (Bowling, 1993). Despite many myths and stereotypes about aging, there are many advantages associated with aging (Knight, 2004). Such advantages include psychological and mental development as well as continued social engagement and intellectual stimulation. In the following section, both of these factors will be briefly discussed.
Psychological and Mental Development with Age
The later years, defined as age 65 or older (Himes, 2001), can be a period of continued psychological growth during which people adapt to new roles and discover creative outlets for their leisure time as well as prepare themselves for the end of life (Lewittes, 1989; Medinger & Varghese, 1981). Upon entering this stage, adults begin to assert the competence and creativity attained during middle adulthood, while also giving additional thought to life's meaning (Knight, 2004). That is, adults may begin to apply the wealth of their life experiences, their perspectives on time, and their adaptations to life crises to personally satisfying answers to the most fundamental of existential questions (Bohlmeijer, Valenkamp, Westerhof, Smit, & Cuijpers, 2005).
Memory, reasoning, information, problem-solving abilities, and mental rigidity or fluidity can influence the capacity of older adults to introspect, assess personal past history, and make plans for the future (Knight, 2004). Through encounters with diverse experiences, decision making, parenting, other forms of tutoring or mentoring of younger generations, and efforts to formulate a personal philosophy, adults can reach new levels of conscious thought (Coleman, Ivani-Chalian, & Robinson, 1999). The accumulation of experiences throughout each older person's life also undoubtedly adds to the framework and self-evaluation of one's life. With such experiences, it may become easier to accept and realize that change, whether linear or cyclic, is a basic element of life at both individual and social levels. As a witness to these changes and varied experiences, older persons exercising positive and hopeful attitudes can aid them in gaining special perspectives on conditions of continuity and change within their culture that can help them shape their own lives (Collings, 2001; Kenel, 2005). In the process of developing a psychohistorical perspective, very old adults can develop a personal understanding of stability and change, effects of history on individual lives, and one's place in the chain of evolution (Haight & Michel, 1998).
Older persons also share a unique place in the process of psychosocial evolution. As parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents, individuals are able to see their lines of descent continue into the fourth generation (Fallon, 1998; Walsh, 1988). Furthermore, older persons are in unique positions that allow them to examine and reflect on how each generation that followed them has added to existing knowledge as well as value bases (Troll, 1996). With these observations and reflections, older persons can choose to embrace the timeless role of keeping family members connected to the past as they knew it by maintaining the value of the oral tradition of history and storytelling. With each story, new connections can be made to the distant past (Knight, 2004). Finally, a greater investment in the future may develop as the very old see in their great-grandchildren the concrete extension of their ancestry three generations into the future.
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