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Part 1: Summary developmental psychology lecture and readings
- Instelling
- Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Summary of the lectures and readings for the course of developmental psychology Lecture 1-7
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Reading 1: Chapter 2, Origins of Psychological TestingRudimentary forms of testing in China in 2200 b.c.
● The use of psychological testing is a phenomenon of the twentieth century, however
rudimentary forms of testing date back to at least 2200 b.c.
Physiognomy, phrenology and the psychograph
● Physiognomy: it is the notion that we can judge the character of a person from their
outward appearance, especially their face
○ Even though now this type of testing is no longer relevant, physiognomy
represents an earlier form of psychological testing
● Physiognomy then laid the foundation for what came after that known as phrenology
● Phrenology is often attributed to the scientist Franz Joseph Gall
○ He believed that if someone was good at for example being violent, then this
specific part of the brain would be more developed and larger and this could be
traced when measuring the size of the skull
○ He was measuring the ‘bumps’ that would appear on people’s heads
● We know today that this type of testing is not accurate, still his work laid an important
foundation for modern day neuroscience
The brass instruments era of testing
● The problem with early experimental psychologists was that they thought that simple
sensory processes meant that a person was intelligent
Article: Cognition in aging and age-related disease
Chapter Synopsis
● Even though, aging plays a different role in every human being, for the majority of
people it is associated with relatively low cognitive decline (people age healthy or
successfully in a sense)
● For other people, memory declines over time which is known as dementia
● For a small part of the population, people experience high levels of cognitive impairment
which is referred to as the dementia of the Alzheimer's type
Introduction
● The population is getting older and as a result it as become increasingly interesting how
the neural and cognitive changes in the brain play a role in the way people age
Cognitive declines with healthy aging
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, ● The way in which adults age varies from person to person. However there are a few
common problems that many aging adults explain and these can be categorized into the
following three categories:
○ 1. Problems paying attention to relevant information and ignoring irrelevant
information of their environment
○ 2. Having difficulties finding the correct or appropriate words
○ 3. Having problems with remembering the context in which information has been
learned
Domain-general theories of cognitive aging
● There are three main underlying factors that cause aging people to have cognitive
declines. These three main causes are:
● 1. Changes in sensory perception
● 2. Changes in inhibitory ability
● 3. Changes in the speed of processing
Sensory-deficits
● The sensory deficit hypothesis believes that cognitive decline is a result of the changes in
sensation (for example deficitions in hearing and vision)
● An example of this is that it is for older adults a lot more difficult to hear words of speech
against a noise background than it is for younger adults
Inhibition
● The inhibition hypothesis believes that it is more difficult for older adults to pay attention
to the information that is relevant to them as opposed to information that is not relevant to
them
● An interesting example here is that if there is sign proposed to them that asks them to turn
off the stove they may read this instead as to turn of the lights
● What this theory also implies is that if it more difficult for aging adults to remember
relevant information and instead they remember irrelevant information, then it will also
be more difficult for them to have enough capacity in their brains to store relevant
task-relevant information
Speed of processing
● Older adults have a slower speed of processing than young adults. This is at both the
motor level but also the cognitive level
● It makes sense that because older adults have a slower speed of processing then it is also
more difficult for them to perform well on tasks and generally they take longer to do so
Word-finding difficulties and transmission deficits
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, ● Older adults have difficulty retrieving the appropriate name for a person, place or thing
● As a result, they seem to suffer a lot more from the so-called ‘tip of the tongue’ state in
which a person is trying to search for a word but does not seem to find it
● It has also been shown that regular objects such as apples, books or furniture pieces are
easier to remember for older adults as they see them everyday and are therefore more
primed to remember them. At the same time, random names of people (with the
exception of nicknames) do not give this same type of priming and therefore it is a lot
more difficult for them to remember names of people
Preserved cognitive function with healthy aging
● Interestingly, some aspects of cognition remain markedly stable or have even shown to
improve as individuals age
Crystallized intelligence
● It has been shown that crystallized intelligence refers to the ability to retrieve and use
information that has been acquired throughout a lifetime
● This type of intelligence is often contrasted with fluid intelligence in which a person has
the ability to store and manipulate new information
● Fluid intelligence tends to be disrupted by healthy aging whereas crystallized aging tends
to remain stable throughout a lifespan
● As a result, older adults are often better at answering questions that rely on general world
knowledge or detecting spelling errors
Emotion regulation
● After the age of 60, the ability to regulate emotions seems to start to improve
● Thus, older adults have lower rates of depression and seem to be able to make better
choices in terms of what brings them happiness such as spending time with close family
members and friends
● They also tend to recover faster from depressive episodes
Neural changes with healthy aging
● The largest changes in structure and function during age occur in the prefrontal cortex
and in the medial temporal-lobe whilst other cortical and subcortical regions remain
relatively preserved across the lifespan
Changes in prefrontal cortex
● The prefrontal cortex shows notable changes with aging
● At a structural level, there is evidence of atrophy (the shrinking of booth gray and white
matter)
● The gray matter declines may reflect reductions in the number of cells due to cell death
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, ● The white matter changes reflect axonal abnormalities and may result in sowed
neurotransmission
○ It is possible that these white matter changes may mediate the cognitive slowing
that accompanies healthy aging
Medial temporal-lobe changes
● The hippocampus is a region in the brain that has been shown to change a lot due to aging
● It is not clear however whether these changes are because there is significant cell loss or
because there are more neuronal shrinkage happening in the hippocampus
● The hippocampus plays an important role in memory collection and forming vivid and
detailed memories
● Therefore, it makes sense that it is more difficult for older adults to remember things
when the hippocampus undergoes such structural changes
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