It is more difficult to generalize about adulthood stages than about life’s early stages

 Physical abilities peak in the mid-twenties  Decline in physical abilities begins imperceptibly  Gradual decline in fertility, resulting in menopause for women

 Chromosome tips (telomeres) wear down with age  When cells die, it is more likely that they are not replaced with perfect genetic replicas  Sensory abilities  Visual sharpness and distance perception decline with age  Smell and hearing also decline  Pupil shrinks and the lens becomes less transparent  Retina of a 65 year old receives 1/3 as much light as your retinas do  “Don’t you need better light for reading?”

 Neural processing does slow down (most evident on complex tasks)  By age 80, there is a brain weight reduction by 5%  Physical exercise stimulates neural connections and brain cell development (and neurogenesis in the hippocampus)  Active older adults tend to be mentally quicker  Exercise also helps maintain the telomeres

 Strikes 3% of the world’s population by age 75  Symptoms are NOT normal aging  Memory, then reasoning deteriorates; then the person becomes emotionally flat; then disoriented; then incontinent; then mentally vacant (can take 5-20 years)  Why?  Loss of brain cells and deterioration of neurons that produce acetylcholine (ACh)

 When asked to remember the two most important events over the last half-century, most people tend to name events from their teens and twenties  Early adulthood is a peak time for memory and some types of learning  Postformal thought: understanding that there is more than one right answer or none at all  Age and memory  Age does not seem to affect recognition (but does recall)  Slower to recall information  Type of information also plays a role  Nonsense syllables or unimportant events – more errors

 Do we get wiser or does or intelligence decrease with age?  Depends on what kind of intelligence we are talking about!  Crystallized intelligence: accumulated knowledge  Increases!  Fluid intelligence: ability to reason speedily and abstractly  Decreases slowly up to age 75, then more rapidly  Mathematicians and scientists produce much of their most creative work during their late 20s  Historians, philosophers, writers tend to produce much of their best work after 40!  Mental ability more strongly correlates to proximity to death, not age

 Erickson’s Psychosocial Stages  Young adulthood (20s-40s): Intimacy v. Isolation  Struggle to form close relationships and gain the capacity for intimate love, or they feel isolated  Middle adulthood (40s-60s): Generativity v. Stagnation  Need to discover a sense of contribution to the world (usually through family and work), or they may feel a lack of purpose  Late adulthood (late 60s and up): Integrity v. Despair  Reflecting on his or her life, an older adult may feel a sense of satisfactions or failure

 Sense of identify, confidence, and self-esteem strengthen as we get older  Do we go through a mid-life crisis in our 40s?  No (for ¾ people)  Usually caused by an event (death, divorce, job change), not age  Happiness  Slightly higher amongst young and older adults that those middle aged  Positive feelings usually increase with age  The amygdala is not as active when processing negative events (but still active with positive events!)  Generally, feelings mellow as we get older  Less reactive  Average feeling tends to remain stable  Life is less of a roller coaster!