Adulthood and ageing: chances
and risks
Lecture 1: Introduction
Overview of today’s meeting
- Introduction to the course
- Assignment ‘report on experience of aging’
- An overview of adult development
Introduction into adult development
At what age does development stop
It never stops, a decline is still a development. The only time it actually stops is when you
die. We develop throughout our whole life
What is old?
- Childhood (0-15)
- Young adulthood (15-30): relatively few responsibilities for others. Study, first job
- Midlife (30-60): family, work, and caring for others
- Active old age (60-80): period of freedom in relatively good health
- Intense care (80+): period of (often) physical and/or mental decline and increase of
dependency on others
Stability versus change in adult life
Continuity theory (Atchley, 1989)
The majority of older adults show relative consistency in
- Especially in personality traits
- Attachment and relationships
- Beliefs, traditions, interest, and activities
Despite their changing physical, mental, and social status
However, more recent research show that it’s more nuanced and if you are for example
more introvert it can still change overtime.
Sources of change: influences on adult development
Normative age-graded influences Related to chronological age Biological: e.g., grey hear,
wrinkles
Environmental: e.g., marriage,
retirement
Normative history related Related to historical time, cohort Wars, 2008 financial crisis,
influences effects COVID pandemic
Non-normative life Unusual occurrences that have a Loss of a partner in early
influences/life events major impact on a specific adulthood, winning the lottery,
person’s life starting a new job at age 65
Two important approaches on adult development
- Life-span developmental psychology approach
o Development is a lifelong process
, o Combination of gains and losses
Developmental stages (Erikson)
SOC model
- Bioecological model of development
o Crucial role of the environment
Bronfenbrenners’ model of
ecological systems
Self-determination theory
Both influence the well-being
Developmental stages (Erikson)
The stages from Erikson every stage have their own goal,
and this gives rise to a challenge
SOC model (Baltes): successful ageing
is about selection, optimization and compensation. We select
the things we prefer, when we grow older, we select what is
most important but related to what are we able to do. We can
optimize the things we love to do, and also about. If you are
unable to optimize the things you love, compensation comes in
play like seeking help or alternatives
SOC model
Pianist Arthur Rubinstein continued to play with enormous skill into his 80’s:
- He picked a smaller set of pieces (S)
- Took more time to study them (O)
- And learned techniques to mask that he became less fast (C)
Development in the context of the environment
- Bronfenbrenners’ model of ecological systems (see handbook). It
is about 5 systems we live in and their interaction. Microsystem,
exosystem, mesosystem, macrosystem and the individual
- SDT (Deci & Ryan, 2008)
Well-being
- Emotional: balance between positive and negative feelings, satisfaction with life,
interest
- Psychological: self-acceptance, goal in life, autonomy, competence, relatedness
- Social: social acceptance, contribution to society
Older adults experience more emotional well-being: paradox of ageing. Less psychological
well-being. Equal amount of social well-being.
Meaning of ageing
- Experience of (own) ageing is important for individual development
- The effect of stereotypes and ‘ageism’
Ageing is very diverse!
,Ageing has many different components which makes it an individual developmental process.
‘The’ older adult does not exist
Lecture 2: life stories
The meaning of life stories
- Increasing interest from society and older adults themselves in (writing) life stories
- Increasing use of methods based on life stories in health care
Today’s goal:
- Insight in how people create their story
- Insight in how stories can help people in maintaining positive mental health
‘When the story of our life is consistent and adequate (based on own experiences) it gives us
a basic trust that enables us to cope with radical events and social changes’ (E. Bohlmeijer,
2007)
- Not everyone succeeds in creating a positive and consistent story (psychological
symptoms)
- Identification of problems in a story
Life stories and autobiographical memory
Life stories are based on our autobiographical memories. The role of memory and recalling
memories.
Remembering
- Why do we remember things?
- What do we remember?
- How do we remember things?
Why: Reminiscence
- The act of process of recollecting memories of oneself in the past (autobiographical
memory)
- Recall of particular or generic episodes that may or may not have been previously
forgotten. By consciously talking about them you might remember them again
- ‘Natural phenomenon’ -> we do it all the time, it’s part of our normal development
- ‘Conscious recall’ -> possibility for intervention, for instance to change the way you
look back at certain memories
- Based on truth -> not always remembered completely as it happened, a construction
process
- Not specific for old age: reminiscence plays an important
role in our development over the life span
- Why do we remember? Erikson; making up life balance,
acceptance of (end of) life, developing wisdom
- What other functions could reminiscence have?
o The ones in red are the more negative functions
and in green the more positive functions about
reminiscence
What do we remember? Autobiographic memory
‘We are what we remember’ Life story as a construction
, - First memory, we often see that our first autobiographic memory is from around the
age 4/5, from before this age it is often not autobiographic but more a picture or a
smell etc.
- Childhood amnesia, lack of autobiographic memories from the first 4/5 years of our
life
- Reminiscence bump, peak of autobiographic memories around adolescence time
period
- Recency effect, more memories from recent years
- The importance of situations (emotion), often linked to remembering something
better
Reminiscence bump
Explanations
- Period of reminiscence bump = period of identity formation,
lots of new things happening
- Cognitive skills: increase until age 25 and then decrease
- Processing of information: new memories are better stored
What do we remember?
Structure autobiographical memory:
- Periods in life (‘When I worked at Philips’)
- General events (holidays, come back every year)
- Specific events (happened only ones, including images, feelings, details)
How do we remember things?
- Authenticity of memories:
o Facts versus emotions, if you were very scared in a situation but the person
next to you wasn’t you will probably remember a situation very differently
o Sensory details, often way better remembered than facts or things someone
said
o Own memory or not? Is it your memory or the photo/story of an event you
seem to remember? For making a life-story this doesn’t really seem to matter.
Then the meaning is more important towards a certain memory
- Self-image and identity <-> memories, on the one hand we try to search for
memories that fit with our identity, on the other hand we form our identity based on
the memories we have
- Identification with identity by recalling memories that fit your self-image
- Distancing from the past by:
o Subjective distance in time ‘that was so long ago, I am not the same person
anymore’, conscious way of taking distance from the past
o Me/he perspective, third person perspective
o Criticize the past, but also seeing what you learned from it
o Distancing is not the same as forgetting or suppressing, it is a way of forming
your identity f
Research: narrative identity in dementia
- Do people with dementia lose their identity?
