1. Janet Belsky’s Experiencing the Lifespan, 3e
Chapter 13:
Later Life: Cognitive and Socioemotional Development
Robin Lee, Middle Tennessee State University

2. Understanding Later Life
The median age of the population (the cutoff age at which half of the population is older and half is younger) is now middle age in Europe and Asia.
In Europe, 1 in 4 people will be over 65.
In America, 1 in 5 will be over 65.

3. Why is the population changing?
Baby boomers entering later life
Longevity
Low fertility

4. Exploring Two Elderly Stages
Young-old (sixties and seventies)
Typically healthy, relatively wealthy
Old-old (80 and older)
More likely to be physically frail and poor
These two groups help explain contradictory stereotypes about later life.
The image of the vital sixty-something embarking on new experiences vs. the lonely, aged person languishing in a nursing home

5. Test your understanding of the elderly

6. Understanding memory in later life
People are more likely to attribute forgetfulness to memory loss in older adults (vs. young or middle-age adults).
Older people are hypersensitive to their memory lapses. (Am I getting Alzheimer’s disease?)
For older adults, memory loss is a top-ranking fear.

7. Memory and older adults: the facts
Are older people’s memory abilities really worse than those of younger adults? Unfortunately, YES.
Research indicates that memory abilities do worsen in older adults.
Ability to recall, remembering content, recalling where objects are located
Older adults have difficulties with divided-attention tasks – situations in which they need to memorize material or perform an activity while monitoring something else.
Time pressure increases difficulties with memory.
Time pressure when learning something totally new (fluid tasks) is particularly problematic.

8. Information-processing perspective on memory change
Working memory (process of transforming information into more permanent storage) worsens with age. Why?
Problems with the executive processor (the hypothetical structure responsible for focusing our attention and manipulating material into the permanent memory store)
A symptom is difficulties with selective attention and memorizing information in noisy environments.

9. A Memory-System Perspective on Change
According to memory-system perspective, memory is divided into three types:
Procedural – information remembered automatically
Physical skills or complex motor activity (e.g., riding a bicycle)
Most resilient; last to go in patients with brain diseases
Resides in a different (lower) area of the brain
Semantic – ability to recall facts and basic knowledge
George Washington as first president
Elderly can perform as well on this type of memory as young
Moderately resilient; long-lasting crystallized knowledge
Episodic – the ongoing events of daily life
Recalling isolated events (what you had for breakfast last Tuesday)
Highly fragile in everyone
Where real differences are seen between young and old

10. Interventions: keeping memory fine-tuned (at any age)
Use Selective Optimization with Compensation
Selectively focus on what you need to remember.
Optimize, or work hard to manipulate material in this system into permanent memory.
Use compensation, or external memory aids, when you do not feel confident about remembering information without help.
Use Mnemonic Techniques − strategies to make things emotionally vivid
Basic principle: If it’s vivid emotionally, we remember it (try to get a visual image).
Enhance memory self-efficacy
With extra effort, memory can be good.
Older people who are conscientious can improve memory.

11. Focusing on time to live: Socioemotional Selectivity Theory
Socioemotional selectivity theory – the time left to live affects priorities and social relationships.
Young people focus on the future.
Eager to make it in the wider world; reach a better place at some later date
Older adults realize the future is limited, thus refocus priorities.
Priorities shift from wanting to expand social horizons to being with closest attachment figures.
Focusing on making the most of every moment has the potential to be the happiest time of life.

12. When do we prioritize our lives in later life?
According to socioemotional selectivity theory, we tend to reprioritize our lives as we get older.
Refusing to let insulting remarks pass
Not wasting time on unpleasant people
Spending more time with those closest to us
Carefully choosing social obligations

13. Old age as the best time of life
Older people prioritize emotional states.
Based on the positivity effect – focusing on positive experiences
Older people live less stressful lives.
Report fewer stresses (e.g., raising children, work pressures) than young people

14. Old age as the worst time of life
Economic cutbacks in elderly “entitlements” will impair the quality of life.
In old-old age, people can become isolated, disabled, and realize that death inevitable.
This can lead to loss of purpose and meaning to life.

15. Erikson’s psychosocial stage in later life
Integrity vs. Despair
According to Erikson, reaching integrity means reviewing one’s life and making peace with it.
Having a sense of usefulness and meaning in present life
Having a sense of self-efficacy; feeling in control
Using emotion regulation is key – making the most of difficult situations such as chronic disease.

16. Tips for using the research to help older adults
Give older people ample time to learn material and provide them with a non-distracting environment.
Don’t stereotype the elderly as having a bad memory; reinforce the message that with work, anyone’s memory can be good.
Give older adults chances to exercise their personal passions (recall, being emotionally involved, fosters memory).
Don’t expect older people to automatically want to make new friends at their age (selectivity theory).
Don’t stereotype the elderly as unhappy—assume the reverse is true in the young-old years—but understand that depression is a serious risk when a person is frail and isolated.

17. Examining Retirement
Most think of the U.S. retirement age as 65. Actually, the average age for collecting full Social Security benefits is now 66. It will be 67 for people born after 1970.
True age of retirement is 60 rather than 65.
Because, on average, we live another 20 years after retirement, it is now a full stage of life.
Retirement depends on governments offering programs enabling their citizens to live without working.
Therefore, in countries without government-sponsored programs (mainly in the developing world), people must stay on the job until they physically cannot work.

18. Retirement Income Worry

19. Retirement and Other Countries
Germany: Mercedes-like model (wonderful government support
First government-funded retirement program developed in nineteenth century
System designed to keep people financially comfortable
Government replaces ¾ of person’s working income for life
Stipend increases to standard of living, so people get more financially comfortable with age
United States: Used car model (deteriorating pensions and savings; some guaranteed government support)
Social Security – government-funded program
Pension plans – savings accounts of employees
Model is based on personal initiative.

20. U.S. Retirement – Social Security
Developed by FDR in the Great Depression
Operates as a safety net
Pay into it and get funds when at retirement
Designed to keep people from being destitute, not to fund a comfortable life
The only income source for most low-wage workers
One problem is that the system offers one of the lowest stipends in developed nations.

21. U.S. Retirement – Pension Plans
Pensions: often employer-linked
Workers put aside a portion of their paychecks
Often matched by employer
Funds placed in tax-free account
At retirement, person either gets regular pay-outs or one lump sum.
Often not available at low-wage jobs
During the Great Recession, pension plans were affected dramatically.
Changes in pensions plans are causing more bankruptcies among middle-aged adults.
Also causing many to postpone retirement
By 2015, 1 out of every 2 people will work past age 65. This is typically due either to necessity, possibly to insufficient retirement accounts, or to help cash-strapped children and grandchildren.

22. Deciding to retire Factors that many consider
Enough money to live without working (top-ranking motivation)
Physical ability to keep working (more apt to occur among low-income workers—especially those in physically demanding jobs)
Age discrimination
Job satisfaction
Age discrimination can affect retirement decisions:
Defined as illegally laying off workers or failing to hire or promote them on the basis of age
Is illegal in the United States
However, many corporations offer early buyouts.
May be used by large corporations due to high salaries of older employees

23. Life as a retiree
Are retirees depressed or pleased about retirement? “It depends.”
Positive
Physical and mental health
Focus on “bucket list”; leisure activities
Married
Financial stability
Consider retirement as a challenge; a new phase of life
Volunteering
Negative
Not leaving work by choice – forced retirement
Financial concerns
Health concerns

24. Summing up retirement Retirement is an at-risk stage of life.
Declining pensions plans
Strain on Social Security
Older workers are an at-risk group of employees.
Age discrimination
Older people may be more at risk of being poor.
High rates of poverty in the old-old (and among people who enter retirement relying just on Social Security)
Intergenerational equity – balancing the needs of the young and the old
Abandoning the entitlement programs (i.e., Social Security) would hurt the young because they would be responsible for providing for the older family members.

25. Widowhood Death of a spouse – life’s most traumatic change
Exploring mourning:
Obsession with the loved one and the events surrounding the death
Impulse to search for one’s spouse (mirroring the attachment response that occurs in infancy)
Expect widowed people to “improve”

26. What helps widowed people cope?
Continuing bonds – feeling that the spouse is physically there helps people cope
Working model – constructing an independent life as a phase of widowhood
Religion – helps widowed people grieve by feeling spiritually connected to God
Children and families – children make special effort to attend to grieving parent

27. Having trouble moving on
Widowhood mortality effect – risk of death that occurs among surviving spouses
Men are more at risk, especially old-old men.
Anyone with limited options for remaking a new life
People highly dependent on just a spouse
People in male-dominated cultures

28. Resiliency in Widowhood
Develop a network of attachments and fulfilling identities outside of your marriage before being widowed, to cushion the loss of your life love.
You might want to draw on your faith in God, particularly in the first months, and use the feeling that your spouse is with you as you struggle to remake a competent new life.
Take comfort from your children, but understand that, after some time, they will need to go on with their own lives. Your challenge is to reach out to friends in order to help you construct meaning day by day.
Graciously accept emotional support – but don’t let loved ones take over your life.
Try to see this tragedy as a challenge, an opportunity for understanding that you can function on your own. You may find that you are more resilient than you ever thought.