In this video I describe the changes and challenges associated with adulthood and aging. These include new responsibilities, declines in physical and cognitive abilities, and changes in relationships over time. Despite these changes, however, most older adults see an increase in overall well-being late in life, which is likely due to a shift in the importance of emotional goals and a savoring of the present.
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Video Transcript
Hi, I’m Michael Corayer and this is a Psych Exam Review. In this last video in the unit on development, I’d like to look at some of the challenges and changes that occur throughout adulthood. Now it’s hard to say exactly when adulthood begins; we might have a legal definition that says on your 18th birthday you’re now an adult, but we recognize that that doesn’t really mean that adulthood has begun and what we consider the beginning of adulthood might vary depending on the time period that we’re looking at or in different cultures.
So one way we can think about this is to consider the challenges that adults face and, if you find yourself facing these challenges, then you might consider that your adulthood has begun. And one of the first of these is the desire to form a long-term relationship and perhaps start a family. And so there’s an increased desire to develop a sense of closeness and intimacy with another person. And adults also must manage new social and financial obligations. These social obligations may be related to work and career, and financial obligations often involve being more independent and maybe even having dependents that you are responsible for. And this might be children that you need to also care for, or it could also be aging parents.
Now adulthood is also associated with a number of physical changes and one of these is that our physical abilities will peak early in adulthood and then decline throughout the rest of life. During this decline it’s common to see weight gain and this is often in the form of fat because adults also begin to lose their lean muscle mass over time. And we also know that hair begins to thin and gray, and we also see decreases in sensory abilities for vision, smell, hearing, and taste.
We also have cognitive changes that occur during adulthood. Now while semantic memory tends to stay fairly consistent throughout most of adulthood, we do see a decrease in the ability to access those memories. So it’s more common to experience blocking; where you have a memory but you’re not able to retrieve it when you want to. Fluid intelligence also declines throughout adulthood and this begins earlier than you might think, it actually begins sometime in your mid-20s your fluid intelligence may start declining. Now the reason we don’t notice this right away is that our crystallized intelligence is continuing to increase. You can still acquire specific skills and knowledge and this can make up for the fact that you’re not quite as good at solving new problems or coming up with new strategies or new approaches for something.
We also see some more severe types of cognitive changes that are more common in late adulthood. One of these is dementia. Now many older adults worry about dementia but it’s actually not that common until we get very late in life, if we’re fortunate enough to actually live that long. So in adults who are 65 and up only about 1% suffer from dementia, but once you get to about 85 and older then you see about a quarter of adults have some form of dementia. The onset of dementia can occur very suddenly in some cases, and this is often due to a series of mini-strokes in the brain.
Another cognitive change that many older adults worry about is Alzheimer’s disease. In Alzheimer’s disease what we see is the build-up of what are called amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, and these are bits and pieces of proteins that get folded and wrapped around neurons and prevent them from functioning properly. And this results in memory problems, it can result in disorientation, it can also lead to difficulties in speaking swallowing and walking. In many older adults we do see a shrinkage of brain volume, but in Alzheimer’s disease this shrinkage is more severe.
Lastly we can consider socio–emotional changes associated with aging and adulthood. One of these is a change in the nature of relationships over time and a shift in a long-term relationship from early passionate love to a more companionate type of love. And older adults also have to confront the meaning of their lives and reflect on the choices that they’ve made. One particularly significant choice relates to reproduction; whether they’ve chosen to have children or not. Because as they get older they’ll reach a point where they lose their reproductive abilities and this occurs earlier in women than it does men. This means they have to reflect on whether or not they decided to have children because now it’s too late for them to change their mind.
Now we also see that older adults show reduced concern with acquiring new skills and knowledge and part of the reason for this is that they simply don’t have much time left to use those new skills. This might explain why perhaps your grandparents are less interested in learning to use some new technology and older adults tend to be more focused on emotional goals. That means despite these many declines that we’ve seen in physical abilities and cognitive abilities, the good news is that as people get older and older they tend to see an increase in their well-being. And this is in part because of a greater focus on emotional goals and trying to find the things that they truly care about and the things that truly make them happy. I hope you found this helpful, if so, please like the video and subscribe to the channel for more. Thanks for watching!
