Psychology of Aging
Instructor: Geneviève Quintin
Lecture 1
September 12th, 2007
Psy313: Psychology of Aging
Lectures: Wednesdays, 6-9 pm, room SS 1073
Your Instructor: Geneviève Quintin
Email Address: [email protected]
Course Website:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~geneviev
What Is Aging?
• When you think about aging, what images
does that bring to your mind?
• What are the good aspects of aging?
• What are some problems in aging?
• What do you hope we will discuss in this
course?
Date
Topic
Sept 12th
Course Introduction; Demography
Methods; Biological Aging
Biological Aging (continued)
Sept 19th
Sept 26th
&
Research
October 3rd
Attention and Perceptual Processing; Explanations
pertaining to the paper
Memory
October 10th
Intelligence & Problem-Solving
October 17th
Mental Health & Disorders; Outline Due
October 24th
Midterm 
October 31st
Interventions and Care of Older Adults
November 7th
Social Cognition: Judgment, Stereotypes, and Beliefs
November 14th
Personality
November 21st
Relationships and Family Issues
November 28th
Dying and Bereavement; Paper Due
December 5th
Work & Retirement; Review.
Mid December
Final Examination
Evaluations
• Midterm Exam: 34% of the final grade
• Research Proposal: 32% of the final grade,
including 2% for outline submission
• Final Exam: 34% of the final grade
Today’s Lecture
• What factors come into play when we talk
about aging?
• What do we know about older adults in
Canada and around the world?
• How do we study aging?
Percentage of Population Over 65 in 2000
Projected Percentage of Population Over 65 in
2030
Important Definitions
• Gerontology: Study of aging from maturity
through old age.
• Young-old vs. old-old.
• Ageism: A form of discrimination against
older adults based on age.
– Can you think of any examples?
Life-Span Development
• Multidirectionality: Development late in life
does not only reflect losses but also growth.
e.g.: Decline in vision but increased
wisdom/perspective on life
• Plasticity: Capacity for change & learning.
e.g.: Learning to play an instrument.
• Historical Context: Environmental and cultural
influences. Generational effects.
• Multiple Causation: Biological, psychological,
sociocultural & life-cycle influences.
What Are These Influences?
• What do you think we mean by biological,
psychological, sociocultural, and life-cycle
forces?
• Example: Reaction to being diagnosed with
cancer in a young adult vs. an older adult.
How Do These Influences Act
Over Time?
• Normative Age-Graded Influences: Experiences
that tend to occur at a certain chronological age.
e.g.: Puberty, time at which people get married or
have children.
• Normative History-Graded Influences: Events
shared by most people in a certain culture at a
certain point in time.
• Nonnormative Influences: Random or rare events
that are specific to the life of an individual.
Children of the 80s vs. 90s?
• You can name at least half of
the members of the "Brat Pack".
• You remember when ATARI
was a state of the art video
game system.
• You owned any cassettes.
• You could breakdance, or
wished you could.
• You wanted to be The Hulk for
Halloween.
• You thought that Transformers
were more than meets the eye.
• You wanted to be on Star
Search.
•You knew all the characters
names and their life stories on
“Saved By The Bell”.
•You loved to play Mario 64 or
Final Fantasy.
•You played and or collected
“Pogs”.
•You knew the Macarena by
heart.
•You had or knew someone with
the “Rachel” haircut.
•You wore really baggy jeans.
Is Age Just A Number?
• You meet two people who tell you they are
both 40 years old.
• They are thus the same __________ age,
but it doesn’t tell you if they are the same
________ age.
• Primary vs. Secondary vs. Tertiary aging.
• In this course, we will focus mostly on
primary aging.
A Little Bit Of Demography
• What do we know about older adults as a
group? How can we describe them?
• What are some characteristics of Canadian
older adults? Are they different from
younger adults?
Public Health Agency of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/seniors_at_glance/poster1_e.html
Population Distribution in the United States
in 2001
Projected Population Distribution in the
United States in 2050
Health Canada. (2002). Canada’s aging population. Ottawa, ON: Minister of Public Works and Government Services. Retrieved
from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/fed_paper/pdfs/fedpager_e.pdf
Public Health Agency of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/seniors_at_glance/poster1_e.html
Public Health Agency of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/seniors_at_glance/poster1_e.html
Projected Growth of Minority Population
of Older Adults in the United States
Public Health Agency of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/seniors_at_glance/poster1_e.html
How Educated Are Older Adults?
What Level of Income Do Seniors Have?
Are Older Adults Important Consumers?
Public Health Agency of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/seniors_at_glance/poster1_e.html
Public Health Agency of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/seniors_at_glance/poster1_e.html
Are Older Adults Independent?
Public Health Agency of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/seniors_at_glance/poster1_e.html
Who Are These Older Adults?
• How have they changed over the years as a
group? In gender? In number? In
ethnicity?
• What are some of their other
characteristics?
• Is this portrait consistent with your initial
conceptions? With what is portrayed in the
media?
Controversies in Aging
• Nature vs. Nurture: Is it a question of genes
or environment?
• Stability vs. Change: Can you teach old
dogs new tricks?
• Continuity vs. Discontinuity: Is aging a
series of punctual changes or continuous
changes?
• Universal vs. Context-Specific: Is there a
unique path in aging?
How Do We Study Aging?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of
experimental design, correlational design &
case study?
Some of the difficulties include:
• Age differences vs. age effects
• Cohort effects
• Time-of-measurement effects
Conclusions
• We experience changes as we grow older,
but contrary to stereotypes, it does not
inevitably lead to decline in all areas.
• Older adults are the fastest growing
demographic age group, which will impact
societies in many ways. We will explore
those consequences in future lectures.
• You will need to keep in mind the various
caveats and methodological difficulties to
assess whether a topic was adequately
studied.
Chapter 2: Biological Aging
What Is Biological Aging?
• Can you give me examples of physical
changes people undergo as they age?
• What are some of the impacts of those
changes?
Questions To Answer
• Why do we age?
• What are some normal and abnormal physical
changes associated with aging?
• What factors influence how we age?
Why Do We Age?
• Many theories that are not mutually
exclusive.
• Rate-of-Living Theories Focus on The Overall
Contributrion of Systems in the Body: Limited
energy.
– Metabolic rates: Can only burn so much energy
before too much damage.
– Limited calory consumption: Evidence linking
amount of calories consumed to lifespan in rats
and mice.
– Adaptation to stress.
Why Do We Age?
• Cellular Theories Focus On Cells As
Opposed to Systems.
– Cells are limited in the number of divisions
they can undergo.
– Cross-linking of proteins making the body
stiffer. e.g.: Lowers heart rate.
– Free radicals. Antioxidants are frequently used
to counteract their effects.
Why Do We Age?
• Programmed Cell Death Theories: Theories
Focusing on Genetics.
– Is aging programmed into the genetic code?
– Cells appear to receive signals to self-destruct.
• Genetic pathologies causing destruction:
–
–
–
–
Osteoarthritis
Changes in the brain cells
Alzheimer’s disease
Parkinson’s disease
Aging: Genetics or Environment?
• Or am I going to age like my parents and
grand-parents?
• The answer: Both play an important role!
• In the 30s, Pearl & Pearl showed that people
who live for a long time tend to come from
ancestors who lived long lives.
• What could confound such findings?
Changes in Appearance and
Mobility
• Changes in skin, hair, voice, height, weight,
bones, muscles,… occur as we age.
• How can the environment contribute to those
changes?
• Example of an abnormal change: Osteoporosis
– Loss of bone mass and increased porosity, which
creates a fragilization of the bones.
– Mostly seen in women: 1 woman in 4 over 50 as
opposed to 1 man in 8.
Exploring Osteoporosis
• Riggs et al. (1998): Model of osteoporosis mostly
centered on estrogen deficiency to explain changes in
both women and men.
• Estrogen is crucial in bone mass development.
Testosterone provides an additional periosteal
apposition, which explains larger skeletal structure in
men. (Riggs et al. 2002).
• Menopause: Causes a 1st phase of accelerated bone
loss followed by a second slow decline.
• Men experience the same slow decline as women.
Riggs, B.L., Khosla, S., & Melton, L.J. (2002). Sex steroids and the construction and
conservation of the adult skeleton. Endocrine Reviews, 23 (3), 279-302.
Riggs, B.L., Khosla, S., & Melton, L.J. (2002). Sex steroids and the construction and
conservation of the adult skeleton. Endocrine Reviews, 23 (3), 279-302.
Nutritional Factors in Osteoporosis
• Calcium intake seems to be another key to help
slow bone loss (Heaney, 2000). High calcium
seems to enhance estrogen effect.
• Protein intake: Lack of protein intake often
seen in older adults with fractures of the
femur. (Delmi et al., 1990)
• Phosphorus intake is also crucial.
• Why might nutrition be problematic in elderly
adults?