Gerontology: Summaries, Study Notes and Practice Exams - RUG
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Gerontology is the study of social, biological and psychological aspects of aging. So, aging is the main focus of this course. This course also takes a neuropsychological approach. It shows a relation between (healthy) aging and changes in the brain. The signs and symptoms of common dementia syndromes, their neurobiological underpinnings and the consequences for the patients and their families will be discussed. Not only dementia but also other neurodegenerative diseases and other diseases related to aging are explained in this course. In our everyday lives, we talk about healthy aging a lot. For example by the media or at your university. This is also shown by the drawing: “Staircase of old age” (Trap des ouderdoms): We start at a point in the bottom (when we are born), then we all climb up. The text underneath the drawing says: we all go up and down. Some go down very softly, others with a bang. With this the painters mean that some are confronted with many diseases, others with none while getting older.As years go by, the distribution of ages is changing. Distribution of ages in 1950 was equal for males and females. There were less people of a higher age and many babies. In 1990 the baby boom generation becomes visible. There is an increase in the number of adults. Also the number of 70 year olds and older is increased by then. Last year (2014) it becomes visible that the baby boom generation is getting older (between...
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Kees Keizer and Nina Hansen are this year's lecturer and they describe the course Social Environment and Behavior as an opportunity for the students to learn how social theories are applied to real-life problems. In contrast to most of the other familiar professors their work is focused outside the university and they are usually hired by parties outside to the science domain. For example, Kees has worked on projects with hospitals to stop the smoking in adjacent areas. Whereas, Nina is interested in cultural change and how it is affected by modernization, transforming economies, etc. Her work includes evaluating the introduction of different aids that are successful in the western countries, but its effects are not as clear in the context of developing countries. For instance, micro financing might help people escape poverty, but can also have negative impact on one's family life.
The goals of the course are helping students learn analyzing and explaining how various human factors relate to social problems as well as how the social and physical surrounding affect human behavior and perception. Furthermore, after the course student should be able to apply theories with the aim of evaluating societal problems. Last but not least, gaining insight into how people can be influenced in order to engage in a number of adaptive behaviors, as well as assessing the usefulness of interventions is a crucial step to solving the problem in hand.
We see it is all about addressing some societal issues, but what can these actually be? Reducing the levels of energy use, preventing accidents on the road and convincing people to stop smoking are very well-known examples. In the domain of work, we want to know how to make people more motivated and in turn more productive. Media and its influences have gained lots of attention, as people are overloaded with information. Furthermore, immigration and how people integrate is highly relevant nowadays, because our environment is getting more culturally diverse. Another maybe less well-intentioned example is developing marketing strategies for companies.
However, all of these social psychological problems are interrelated with various economic, political, geographical or historical factors. For instance, there have been numerous earthquakes in the region of Groningen due to the intensive extraction of natural gas. Here economical factor such as the Netherlands' huge profit would be crucial to consider when taking action, because just ceasing the process would lead to inevitable financial issues. Moreover, political factors should be acknowledged as many governmental institutions are involved in such issue. Overall, it is not only people's attitudes and emotions we have to recognize, but take a broader perspective.
Even though we need to be careful about different factors, social aspects are the.....read more
CP is a new course with the following goals: to have knowledge on psychopathology/disorders; to know how science and practice of CP interact; and to be able to make a theoretical argument out of scientific literature.
There are 8 non-obligatory lectures (which will be streamed) and 8 obligatory workgroups (you may miss 1 workgroup with a good reason and do some compensatory work), in which you are expected to give a presentation (about 30 minutes total) and write a paper (shorter than 2500 words, see instructions on Blackboard). The exam contains 8 to 10 open questions.
There is a document on Blackboard which shows some chapters you should read before a lecture. However, all the chapters from the books are relevant for the exam (but the chapters used could be a hint on what they think is most important). Watch out for scientific papers, for tables can be quite specific – don’t learn them by heart, these are not very relevant. Percentages are sometimes relevant, but never precise numbers.
Your grade consists of an exam grade (40%, should be at least 5.5), workgroup participation grade (20%, can be any grade) and a paper grade (40%, should be at least 5.5).
Suicide and contagion
About 1 million people a year commit suicide worldwide. For example, Dutch writer Joost Zwagerman commited suicide one day before this lecture. He had showed numerous risk factors, such as being severly depressed several times and almost losing his father to suicide (perhaps genetic factors?).
A few examples of risk factors for suicide are prior suicide attempt(s), depression, schizophrenia, economic hardship etc.
About 5 people a day commit suicide in Holland, this number is increasing.
Because of this recent celebrity suicide of Zwagerman, there will probably be a lot of attention for this suicide. This is worrysome, because suicide is contagious: hearing about suicide will make some people (mostly people who are already suicidal) commit suicide.
The number of remissions (fallbacks) after two years is higher amongst people with anxiety and people with both anxiety and depression than people with ‘only’ depression.
Antidepressants and losing personality
Kramer, a clinical practitioner, wrote about Prozac: he wrote about patients coming back to their psychiatrist after a depression, not because they have remissions, but because they feel like they lost their personality. ‘I am no longer my self’. This could be a main effect of Prozac.
Typically, depression comes with a lot of anxiety too, which is important to know because anxiety is more chronic. In a treatment, depression reduces first, then neuroticism and extraversion improve.....read more
Establishment of Clinical Psychology
The roots for clinical psychology go back to the Second World War when many soldiers returned traumatised after fighting in the war. The clinicians to that time have not had a clear treatment guidelines, but did what “felt right”. The need of finding ways to treat those people finally led to the establishment of the Journal of Clinical Psychology in 1945. Shortly afterwards, application of the scientist-practitioner started, so that empirical findings were used in clinical practice. Carl Roger stressed the importance of finding ways in which treatment can become more effective. According to Roger, therapies should be studied more in detail in order to become more knowledgeable about how it can be improved.
Clinical Psychology
Clinical psychology (psychopathology) has two different components. It includes the symptoms of the psychological disorders on the one hand, and the scientific study of those symptoms on the other hand. Abnormal psychology is used as a synonym for clinical psychology. When using the term “abnormal”, it is important to define when behaviour is normal versus abnormal. Several factors are taken into account in defining abnormal behaviour. Firstly, “abnormal” involves the deviation from a statistical norm, implying that abnormal behaviour is unusual and can be quantified. However, this criterion can be problematic since comparing normal versus abnormal behaviour usually involves subjective judgment. Furthermore, not all behaviour that deviates from the norm is considered negative: if a great pianist plays the piano every time he is able to do so, for example, this behaviour is not considered to fall into the category of “abnormal psychology”.
Another aspect when considering abnormality is the cultural context of that behaviour. There are no universal standards in the diagnosis of abnormal behaviour. One behaviour might be considered normal in one culture, but abnormal in another one. As a result, people may not receive treatment for specific disorders in some countries. An example which shows the importance of the cultural background is the pseudo-scientific disorder drapetomania: in the past, slaves who ran away from their employers were considered to have this “mental illness”.
Furthermore, abnormality also depends on the individual’s functioning in society. Abnormal behaviour may represent itself by disfunction in daily living. However, not all dysfunctional behaviours are caused by psychopathology: the fact that people spend more time sleeping in winter than in summer can for example better be explained by evolution.
A further criterion of “abnormal” behaviour is that it is distressing or disabling the person. This definition is independent of culture. However, it requires the person to be aware of the negative consequences of the.....read more
Gerontology is the study of social, biological and psychological aspects of aging. So, aging is the main focus of this course. This course also takes a neuropsychological approach. It shows a relation between (healthy) aging and changes in the brain. The signs and symptoms of common dementia syndromes, their neurobiological underpinnings and the consequences for the patients and their families will be discussed. Not only dementia but also other neurodegenerative diseases and other diseases related to aging are explained in this course.
In our everyday lives, we talk about healthy aging a lot. For example by the media or at your university. This is also shown by the drawing: “Staircase of old age” (Trap des ouderdoms): We start at a point in the bottom (when we are born), then we all climb up. The text underneath the drawing says: we all go up and down. Some go down very softly, others with a bang. With this the painters mean that some are confronted with many diseases, others with none while getting older.
As years go by, the distribution of ages is changing. Distribution of ages in 1950 was equal for males and females. There were less people of a higher age and many babies. In 1990 the baby boom generation becomes visible. There is an increase in the number of adults. Also the number of 70 year olds and older is increased by then. Last year (2014) it becomes visible that the baby boom generation is getting older (between 50-60 ), there is an increase of older people and a big drop of births. A future prediction is that there will still be less births and more people getting older. This situation is mainly for developed countries. Less developed countries are more comparable to the triangle situation in 1950. But also in the less developed countries the distribution of ages is changing. But since aging is sometimes accompanied by diseases, problems occur. Because now, we have to start dealing with more people with diseases. In more developed countries there are way more older people, but also in less developed countries there is an increase in older people. Life expectancy at birth also grows all over the world (although faster in the developed countries). Number of children per woman is on a decrease, all over the world.
Aging has many definitions. Chronological age as a definition of aging is mostly used. Chronological age means the time since you were born. But also age as a biological age.....read more
Gerontology is the study of social, biological and psychological aspects of aging. So, aging is the main focus of this course. This course also takes a neuropsychological approach. It shows a relation between (healthy) aging and changes in the brain. The signs and symptoms of common dementia syndromes, their neurobiological underpinnings and the consequences for the patients and their families will be discussed. Not only dementia but also other neurodegenerative diseases and other diseases related to aging are explained in this course.
In our everyday lives, we talk about healthy aging a lot. For example by the media or at your university. This is also shown by the drawing: “Staircase of old age” (Trap des ouderdoms): We start at a point in the bottom (when we are born), then we all climb up. The text underneath the drawing says: we all go up and down. Some go down very softly, others with a bang. With this the painters mean that some are confronted with many diseases, others with none while getting older.
As years go by, the distribution of ages is changing. Distribution of ages in 1950 was equal for males and females. There were less people of a higher age and many babies. In 1990 the baby boom generation becomes visible. There is an increase in the number of adults. Also the number of 70 year olds and older is increased by then. Last year (2014) it becomes visible that the baby boom generation is getting older (between 50-60 ), there is an increase of older people and a big drop of births. A future prediction is that there will still be less births and more people getting older. This situation is mainly for developed countries. Less developed countries are more comparable to the triangle situation in 1950. But also in the less developed countries the distribution of ages is changing. But since aging is sometimes accompanied by diseases, problems occur. Because now, we have to start dealing with more people with diseases. In more developed countries there are way more older people, but also in less developed countries there is an increase in older people. Life expectancy at birth also grows all over the world (although faster in the developed countries). Number of children per woman is on a decrease, all over the world.
Aging has many definitions. Chronological age as a definition of aging is mostly used. Chronological age means the time since you were born. But also age as a biological age.....read more
The swan-song phenomenon refers to:
Until recently a two-stages-of-life viewpoint was prevalent in developmental psychology. According to this perspective, physical and psychological functions were thought to:
Unlike formal knoledge, tacit knowlege……
Wich theorie gives an ultimate explanation of aging?
Cheetah, the famous chimpanzee from the tarzan movie, recently died in a Florida primate sanctuary, ande according to the news he was 80 years old. Wich statement has become more likely because of this information?
In which research design are the results NOT influenced by historic developments?
According to the ecological model of aging, negative affect and maladaptive behaviour will occur:
Diseases that most often cause death are not always the same for younger and older adults. In the European Union we see the following change(s) from 60-85+:
What is characteristic for the quasi-experimental approach in conducting aging research?
What is de Hayflick number and why is it less important for explaining brain cell aging?
In older adults, subjective wellbeing and objective health can be quite different. Genetic differences may play an important role. Which statement best describes the findings in the literature?
What is presbyopia?
According to Parker and Thorslund, health trends in the older population suggest that a concept of general morbidity is not sufficient. Which statement best fit their conclusion:
Which working memory processes are least impaired by primary aging?
Older adults perform poorer in free recall memory tests than in cued recall tests. This is primarily caused by:
When growing older, people can modify behavior to age succesfully. Which statement fit best in the framework of succesful aging according to Baltes?
A recent theory about aging and social relations is the socio-emotional selectivity theory of Cartensen (SESEL-Theory). This theory explains the preference for emotionally immediately gratifying social relations over non-personal factual relationships aimed at future gains from:
What are delirium characteristics:
Salthouse found that in adults the quality of crossword puzzle performance was better in 70 years old than in 50 year olds. This is probably explained by:
What was the most important result of “the nun-study” and how is this explained?
Which of the adaptive processes often used by older persons could be described as a primary control process?
What is the last stage of Erikson
Van Wolffelaar and colleagues studied turning right or left on an intersection in younger and older adult drivers. What did they find?
Starting from Aubrey de Grey’s discussion about how to counteract the negative effect of aging, three approaches were distinguished. What are these
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These lecture summaries are sanderP contributed on 29-11-2018 13:24
These lecture summaries are written in 2016/2017. Does anyone have an update for me on the relevance of these notes for this year? Thank you!
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