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LIFE SPAN PSYCHOLOGY(MPC-002)
TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENT (TMA)
Course Code: MPC- 002 Assignment Code: MPC-002/ASST/TMA/2022- 2023
1. Discuss cognitive development during middle childhood children in early childhood are in the preoperational stage of development in which they learn to think symbolically about the world. From ages 7 to 11, the school-aged child continues to develop in what Piaget referred to as the concrete operational stage of cognitive development. This involves mastering the use of logic in concrete ways. The child can use logic to solve problems tied to their own direct experience but has trouble solving hypothetical problems or considering more abstract problems. The child uses inductive reasoning, which means thinking that the world reflects one’s own personal experience. For example, a child has one friend who is rude, another friend who is also rude, and the same is true for a third friend. Using inductive reasoning, the child may conclude that friends are rude. (We will see that this way of thinking tends to change during adolescence as children begin to use deductive reasoning effectively.) As children’s experiences and vocabularies grow, they build schema and are able to classify objects in many different ways. Classification can include new ways of arranging information, categorizing information, or creating classes of information. Many psychological theorists, including Piaget, believe that classification involves a hierarchical structure, such that information is organized from very broad categories to very specific items. During middle childhood, children also understand the concept of reversibility , or that some things that have been changed can be returned to their original state. Water can be frozen and then thawed to become liquid again. But eggs cannot be unscrambled. Arithmetic operations are reversible as well: 2 + 3 = 5 and 5 – 3 = 2. Many of these cognitive skills are incorporated into the school’s curriculum through mathematical problems and in worksheets about which situations are reversible or irreversible. (If you have access to children’s school papers, look for examples of these.) Information Processing Theory Information processing theory is a classic theory of memory that compares the way in which the mind works to computer storing, processing and retrieving information. According to the theory, there are three levels of memory:
- Sensory memory: Information first enters our sensory memory (sometimes called sensory register). Stop reading and look around the room very quickly. (Yes, really. Do it!) Okay. What do you remember? Chances are, not much, even though EVERYTHING you saw and heard entered into your sensory memory. And although you might have heard yourself sigh, caught a glimpse of your dog walking across the room, and smelled the soup on the stove, you may not have registered those sensations. Sensations are continuously coming into our brains, and yet most of these sensations are never really perceived or stored in our minds.
- Working memory (short-term memory): If information is meaningful (either because it reminds us of something else or because we must remember it for something like a history test we will be taking
in 5 minutes), it moves from sensory memory into our working memory. The process by which this happens is not entirely clear. Working memory consists of information that we are immediately and consciously aware of. All of the things on your mind at this moment are part of your working memory. There is a limited amount of information that can be kept in the working memory at any given time. Rehearsal can help you maintain information in your working memory, but the process by which information moves from working memory into long term memory seems to rely on more than simple rehearsal.
- Long-term memory (knowledge base): This level of memory has an unlimited capacity and stores information for days, months or years. It consists of things that we know of or can remember if asked. This is where you want the information to ultimately be stored. The important thing to remember about storage is that it must be done in a meaningful or effective way. In other words, if you simply try to repeat something several times in order to remember it, you may only be able to remember the sound of the word rather than the meaning of the concept. So if you are asked to explain the meaning of the word or to apply a concept in some way, you will be lost. Studying involves organizing information in a meaningful way for later retrieval. Passively reading a text is usually inadequate and should be thought of as the first step in learning material. Writing keywords, thinking of examples to illustrate their meaning, and considering ways that concepts are related are all techniques helpful for organizing information for effective storage and later retrieval. During middle childhood, children are able to learn and remember due to an improvement in the ways they attend to and store information. As children enter school and learn more about the world, they develop more categories for concepts and learn more efficient strategies for storing and retrieving information. One significant reason is that they continue to have more experiences on which to tie new information. New experiences are similar to old ones or remind the child of something else about which they know. This helps them file away new experiences more easily. Children in middle childhood also have a better understanding of how well they are performing on a task and the level of difficulty of a task. As they become more realistic about their abilities, they can adapt studying strategies to meet those needs. While preschoolers may spend as much time on an unimportant aspect of a problem as they do on the main point, school-aged children start to learn to prioritize and gauge what is significant and what is not. They develop metacognition or the ability to understand the best way to figure out a problem. They gain more tools and strategies (such as “i before e except after c” so they know that “receive” is correct but “recieve” is not.) Language Development Vocabulary One of the reasons that children can classify objects in so many ways is that they have acquired a vocabulary to do so. By 5th grade, a child’s vocabulary has grown to 40,000 words. It grows at the rate of 20 words per day, a rate that exceeds that of preschoolers. This language explosion, however, differs from that of preschoolers because it is facilitated by being able to associate new words with those already known (fast-mapping) and because it is accompanied by a more sophisticated understanding of the meanings of a word. A child in middle childhood is also able to think of objects in less literal ways. For example, if asked for the first word that comes to mind when one hears the word “pizza”, the preschooler is likely to say
grown taller and become heavier. But you may have also experienced changes in the way you think and solve problems. Cognitive change is noticeable when we compare how 6-year olds, 16-year olds, and 46-year olds think and reason, for example. Their thoughts about themselves, others, and the world are probably quite different. Consider friendship—a 6-year-old may think that a friend is someone with whom they can play and have fun. A 16-year old may seek friends who can help them gain status or popularity. And the 46-year old may have acquaintances, but rely more on family members to do things with and confide in. You may have also experienced psychosocial change. This refers to emotions and psychological issues as well as social roles and relationships. Psychologist Erik Erikson suggests that we struggle with issues of trust, independence, and intimacy at various points in our lives (we will explore this thoroughly throughout the course.) This is a very interesting and meaningful course because it is about each of us and those with whom we live and work. One of the best ways to gain perspective on our own lives is to compare our experiences with those of others. In this course, we will strive to learn about each phase of human development and the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes, all the while making cross-cultural and historical comparisons and connections to the world around us. In addition, we will take a lifespan developmental approach to learn about human development. That means that we won’t just learn about one particular age period by itself; we will learn about each age period, recognizing how it is related to both previous developments and later developments. For instance, it helps us to understand what’s happening with the 16-year old by knowing about development in the infant, toddler, early childhood, and middle childhood years. In turn, learning about all of that development and development during adolescence and early adulthood will help us to more fully understand the person at age 46 (and so on throughout midlife and later adulthood). Development does not stop at a certain age; development is a lifelong process. We may find individual and group differences in patterns of development, so examining the influences of gender, cohort/generation, race, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, education level, and time in history is also important. With the lifespan developmental perspective, we will gain a more comprehensive view of the individual within the context of their own developmental journey and within social, cultural, and historical contexts. In this way, this course covers and crosses multiple disciplines, such as psychology, biology, sociology, anthropology, education, nutrition, economics, and healthcare. German psychologist Paul Baltes, a leading expert on lifespan development and aging, developed one of the approaches to studying development called the lifespan perspective. This approach defines some basic characteristics of life span development.
- Development is Lifelong:
- Development is Multidimensional
- Development is Multidirectional
- Development is Plastic
- Development is Contextual
- Development is Multidisciplinary
- Development involves Growth, Maintenance, and Regulation
- Development is Embedded in History
- Normative Age Graded Influences
- Normative History Graded Influence
- Non-normative Events 1. Development is lifelong Lifelong development means that development is not completed in infancy or childhood or at any specific age; it encompasses the entire lifespan, from conception to death. The study of development traditionally focused almost exclusively on the changes occurring from conception to adolescence and the gradual decline in old age; it was believed that the five or six decades after adolescence yielded little to no developmental change at all. The current view reflects the possibility that specific changes in development can occur later in life, without having been established at birth. The early events of one’s childhood can be transformed by later events in one’s life. This belief clearly emphasizes that all stages of the lifespan contribute to the regulation of the nature of human development. 2. Development is multidimensional By multidimensionality, Baltes is referring to the fact that a complex interplay of factors influence development across the lifespan, including biological, cognitive, and socioemotional changes. Baltes argues that a dynamic interaction of these factors is what influences an individual’s development. For example, in adolescence, puberty consists of physiological and physical changes with changes in hormone levels, the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics, alterations in height and weight, and several other bodily changes. But these are not the only types of changes taking place; there are also cognitive changes, including the development of advanced cognitive faculties such as the ability to think abstractly. There are also emotional and social changes involving regulating emotions, interacting with peers, and possibly dating. 3. Development is multidirectional Baltes states that the development of a particular domain does not occur in a strictly linear fashion but that development of certain traits can be characterized as having the capacity for both an increase and decrease in efficacy over the course of an individual’s life. If we use the example of puberty again, we can see that certain domains may improve or decline in effectiveness during this time. For example, self-regulation is one domain of puberty which undergoes profound multidirectional changes during the adolescent period. During childhood, individuals have difficulty effectively regulating their actions and impulsive behaviors. Scholars have noted that this lack of effective regulation often results in children engaging in behaviors without fully considering the consequences of their actions. Over the course of puberty, neuronal changes modify this unregulated behavior by increasing the ability to regulate emotions and impulses. Inversely, the ability for adolescents to engage in spontaneous activity and creativity, both domains commonly associated with impulse behavior, decrease over the adolescent period in response to changes in cognition.
- Non-normative Events: Unusual occurrences that have a major impact on an individual’s life; the occurrence, the pattern, and sequence of these events are not applicable to most individuals (e.g. Death of a parent at young age, getting a serious illness.
3. Discuss psychosocial challenges in older adults.
As a person grows older and enters into the retirement years, the pace of life and productivity tend to slow down, granting a person time for reflection upon their life. They may ask the existential question, “It is okay to have been me?” If someone sees themselves as having lived a successful life, they may see it as one filled with productivity, or according to Erik Erikson, integrity. Here integrity is said to consist of the ability to look back on one’s life with a feeling of satisfaction, peace and gratitude for all that has been given and received. Thus, persons derive a sense of meaning (i.e., integrity) through careful review of how their lives have been lived (Krause, 2012). Ideally, however, integrity does not stop here, but rather continues to evolve into the virtue of wisdom. According to Erikson, this is the goal during this stage of life. If a person see’s their life as unproductive, or feel that they did not accomplish their life goals, they may become dissatisfied with life and develop what Erikson calls despair, often leading to depression and hopelessness. This stage can occur out of the sequence when an individual feels they are near the end of their life (such as when receiving a terminal disease diagnosis). Aging is a physical and psychological journey, and many seniors fear they won’t age gracefully. They can become stressed, disengaged, and unable to handle change, which can lead to some of the issues mentioned below. To address these problems, you should learn more about the psychosocial aspects of aging and how it affects elderly people. The increase in the number of older people worldwide, alongside an increase in life expectancy, has led to a more attention to the psychological factors of ageing. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that successful ageing is multidimensional, including a level of psychological, physical and social, and well-being. The field of geropsychology is becoming increasingly important as populations age. Geropsychology is a specialty that focuses on understanding, treating, and improving the mental health of older adults. Currently many seniors with mental health issues may not be receiving the right treatment. Prompt recognition and treatment of mental health issues in older adults is essential. Psychosocial interventions and medicines are recommended.
- Isolation Memory problems, reduced mobility, and various age-related issues could prevent your senior loved one from accepting invitations to social gatherings. The psychosocial aspects of aging might prevent him or her from maintaining a social life, increasing the risk of isolation. Motivate your loved one to
get out into the community to establish new friendships while still maintaining old relationships. Staying connected to friends, family members, and associates could prevent isolation and keep your loved one socially active. For families living in Barrie, respite care can be a wonderful solution when their aging loved ones need companionship and socialization a few hours a week or just need minor assistance with daily household tasks. At Home Care Assistance, we thrive on helping seniors maintain their independence while living in the comfort of home.
- Family Issues Family problems and an inability to handle the anxiety associated with them could prevent your loved one from taking on purposeful tasks in the senior years. Past conflicts that continue to go unresolved could keep your loved one from participating in purposeful activities, especially if family members he or she no longer associates with are in attendance when the events take place. Help your loved one come to terms with family issues, and develop strategies to help him or her handle family-related anxiety.
- Poor Self-Esteem Chronic conditions like dementia and Parkinson’s can lead to fear and grief and negatively affect self-esteem. Encouraging your loved one to take on new tasks and work on past goals could boost his or her confidence and quality of life. Your support could also reassure your loved one when it comes to changing treatments or accepting help from family members or professional caregivers.
- Poor Hygiene Poor mental health and cognitive impairment could prevent your loved one from maintaining good hygiene. When it comes to your parent’s appearance, help him or her get dressed, and make sure he or she always has clean clothes that fit properly. When seniors look their best, they can boost their mental and emotional health. A home caregiver can be a wonderful source of support when your loved one needs help maintaining good hygiene. When considering in-home care, families should make sure their senior loved ones have the resources they need to maintain their independence and remain healthy. Trusted in-home care professionals can assist seniors with daily tasks like cooking, bathing, and exercise, and they can also encourage them to focus on healthier lifestyle habits.
- Substance Abuse
According to the American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, an individual has intellectual disability if he or she meets three criteria:
- IQ is below 70- 75
- There are significant limitations in two or more adaptive areas (skills that are needed to live, work, and play in the community, such as communication or self-care)
- The condition manifests itself before the age of 18 Identification process of intellectual disability in children: There are many signs of an Intellectual Disability. For example, children may: Sit up, crawl, or walk later than other children Learn to talk later or have trouble speaking Have trouble understanding social rules Have trouble seeing the consequences of their actions Have trouble solving problems Have trouble thinking logically Intellectual disability may be suspected for many different reasons. If a baby has physical abnormalities that suggest a genetic or metabolic disorder, a variety of tests may be done to confirm the diagnosis. These include blood tests, urine tests, imaging tests to look for structural problems in the brain, or electroencephalogram (EEG) to look for evidence of seizures. In children with developmental delays, the doctor will perform tests to rule out other problems, including hearing problems and certain neurological disorders. If no other cause can be found for the delays, the child will be referred for formal testing. Intellectual disability may be suspected for many different reasons. If a baby has physical abnormalities that suggest a genetic or metabolic disorder, a variety of tests may be done to confirm the diagnosis. These include blood tests, urine tests, imaging tests to look for structural problems in the brain, or electroencephalogram (EEG) to look for evidence of seizures. In children with developmental delays, the doctor will perform tests to rule out other problems, including hearing problems and certain neurological disorders. If no other cause can be found for the delays, the child will be referred for formal testing. Effective Teaching Strategies One such strategy is to break down learning tasks into small steps. Each learning task is introduced, one step at a time. This avoids overwhelming the student. Once the student has mastered one step, the next step is introduced. This is a progressive, step-wise, learning approach. It is characteristic of many learning models. The only difference is the number and size of the sequential steps.
A second strategy is to modify the teaching approach. Lengthy verbal directions and abstract lectures are ineffective teaching methods for most audiences. Most people are kinesthetic learners. This means they learn best by performing a task "hands-on." This is in contrast to thinking about performing it in the abstract. A hands-on approach is particularly helpful for students with ID. They learn best when information is concrete and observed. Third, people with ID do best in learning environments where visual aids are used. This might include charts, pictures, and graphs. These visual tools are also useful for helping students to understand what behaviors are expected of them. For instance, using charts to map students' progress is very effective. Charts can also be used as a means of providing positive reinforcement for appropriate, on-task behavior. A fourth teaching strategy is to provide direct and immediate feedback. Individuals with ID require immediate feedback. This enables them to make a connection between their behavior and the teacher's response. A delay in providing feedback makes it difficult to form connection between cause and effect. As a result, the learning point may be missed.
5. Elucidate Marcia’s identity status.
One approach to assessing identity development was proposed by James Marcia. In his approach, adolescents are asking questions regarding their exploration of and commitment to issues related to occupation, politics, religion, and sexual behavior. Studies assessing how teens pass through Marcia’s stages show that although most teens eventually succeed in developing a stable identity, the path to it is not always easy and there are many routes that can be taken. Some teens may simply adopt the beliefs of their parents or the first role that is offered to them, perhaps at the expense of searching for other more promising possibilities (foreclosure status). Other teens may spend years trying on different possible identities (moratorium status) before finally choosing one. Identity Status Description 8 Identity-Diffusion status is a status that characterizes those who have neither explored the options, nor made a commitment to an identity. The individual does not have firm commitments regarding the issues in question and is not making progress toward them. Those who persist in this identity may drift aimlessly with little connection to those around them or have little sense of purpose in life. Identity-Foreclosure status is the status for those who have made a commitment to an identity without having explored the options. The individual has not engaged in any identity experimentation and has established an identity based on the choices or values of others. Some parents may make these decisions for their children and do not grant the teen the opportunity to make choices. In other instances, teens may strongly identify with parents and others in their life and wish to follow in their footsteps. Identity-Moratorium status is a status that describes those who are exploring in an attempt to establish an identity but have yet to have made any commitment. The individual is exploring various choices but has not yet made a clear commitment to any of them. This can be an anxious and emotionally tense time period as the adolescent experiments with different roles and explores various beliefs. Nothing is certain and there are many questions, but few answers.
Sex and gender equality is something we are all striving to achieve but there will always be some differences that must be acknowledged and respected. The male and female forms obviously have their differences and so too are the stages in life for each group. The most typical signs of ageing are for many those that are visible. Typically that is wrinkling/sagging skin; loss or greying hair and weight gain. The ageing process for both men and women is unavoidable and are mostly caused by the natural lowering of sex hormones. There are some external or lifestyle factors that can play their part in premature ageing which should therefore be solvable. The ageing differences between men and women Some key differences in men and women:
- Male skin is generally thicker and firmer due to having more collagen and elastin, so men’s skin thins at a slower rate.
- Men’s facial and body hair acts as a natural barrier against sun exposure. This helps protect the skin from UV damage and can delay the appearance of fine lines.
- Women over age 40 tend to experience more stress about age-related changes in appearance. In a survey of more than 1,000 adults, 33% of the women said they were concerned about weight changes, sagging, and wrinkling, compared to 21% of men. Older age. As people move into their older years, skin becomes less elastic, contributing to the appearance of wrinkles and sagging skin. Muscle strength diminishes, causing belly pouches and droopy arm skin. Signs of aging in men typically begin with the formation of wrinkles on the forehead and loss of definition around the jawline. Some key differences in men and women:
- After menopause, female skin thins significantly.
- For women, the delicacy of the skin around the eyes, mouth, and neck contributes to more wrinkles and drooping in those areas.
- After the age of 50, surveys have shown that men have more difficulty coping with physical aging, perhaps because physical slowing and increased frailty begins to impact their everyday activities. The sex hormones are the most significant and unavoidable cause of ageing – and many people underestimate their power – until they see the effects of their decline. This is where the real differences start for men and women. MEN: Testosterone is the main sex hormone for men. This hormone produces more body hair and thicker skin (25%) for men than women. It is the hormone that is relied upon for physical development in pubescent boys and good sexual health for men. Men are actually at an advantage to start with due to having thicker skin which contains more collagen. Their skin produces more moisture through higher perspiration levels which contain lactic acid.
For men testosterone decreases gradually with age – with more visible effects starting to show around the age of 30. Typically these signs are hair loss and some weight gain. It is believed that a man’s optimum “sperm health” is reached at age 30 but there is not necessarily a fast or significant decline in quality towards older age – it is thought to be about 1% per year after age 30. Although collagen starts to decline at the age of 30, the effects on the skin are less noticeable for men until they reach their 50s. Facial hair can help protect against the weather and other external elements such as pollution and smoke. However, there has been one interesting revelation about how the male face changes over time. Men are more likely to develop deep lines in the forehead and not so many around the mouth. The skull around the eye area is much larger in men than women and this lack of bony support gives men a more hollowed look which exacerbates bags and wrinkling at the top part of the face. Men have more sebaceous glands around the mouth due to the high production of facial hair. Whether this shaved or worn long – the now fashionable beard – these rigid protein follicles are 4mm below the skins surface giving structural support. WOMEN: Unlike men, women rely upon three sex hormones: progesterone, estrogen and testosterone. Progesterone is responsible for pregnancy, estrogen to ensure the “fully-comprehensive” female characteristics and testosterone – the more male balancing hormone for strength and sex drive. These all start to enter a decline phase towards the end of the 20s or early 30s. Estrogen is the biggest influence on a woman’s ageing process. Physiological and mental (emotional) health is impacted due to comparatively sudden drops in this vital hormone in the lead up to the menopause (peri-menopause) and beyond. The skin, hair and weight gain are the areas most affected by this change in the body and for many women the only alternative is to seek Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). Like men, woman’s collagen levels start to drop at around the age of 30 at a similar rate. However, when a woman reaches the menopause – around age 50 the decline quickens for about five years. Due to the loss of collagen and drying skin, fine lines and sagging around the eyes and jaw line are obvious signs of ageing. For some with thicker skin deeper lines might occur due to lack of collagen and elasticity, but the skin might “hold up” better around the jaw which can be less of an age give-away. Hair loss and greying is also an obvious sign of ageing as a result of the drop in all hormones but in particular estrogen. Fatty deposits will start to gather around the abdomen which is stubborn to remove through dieting and exercise alone. Despite the warnings about skin cancer and the premature ageing effects of the sun, many women do continue to sunbathe. However, the use of sunscreens and extra moisturizing plus heeding advice on drinking more water, women’s skin today is probably better than those of 40 years ago. Basically we are taking better care of our skin the more we understand how it works and ages.
7. Explain Levinson’s seasons of life theory.
Let’s begin with a crucial aspect of Levinson’s theory—a concept he terms the life structure. This term refers to the underlying patterns of a person’s life at a particular time, an evolving cognitive framework reflecting an individual’s views about the nature and meaning of his or her life.
interviews for each subject. The questions asked focused on the subject’s life accounts in their post adolescent years. The interviews focused on topics such as the men’s background (education, religion, political beliefs) and major events or turning points in their lives. Levinson’s concept of life structure (the men’s socio-cultural world, their participation in their world and various aspects of themselves) is the major component in Levinson’s theory. The life structure for each person evolves through the developmental stages as people’s age. Two key concepts in Levinson’s model are the stable period and the transitional period in a person’s development. The stable period is the time when a person makes crucial choices in life, builds a life structure around the choices and seeks goals within the structure. The transitional period is the end of a person’s stage and the beginning of a new stage. Levinson’s model contains five main stages. They are the pre-adulthood stage (age 0 – 22), the early adulthood stage (age 17 – 45), the middle adult stage (age 40 – 65), the late adulthood stage (age 60 –
- and the late late adult stage (age 80 plus). Levinson states “the shift from one era to the next is a massive development step and require transitional period of several years.”(Levinson, 1977) This would explain why there is an overlap in each of these stages. Levinson’s first adult stage in his model is called the Early Adult Transition Period. This phase is similar to Erikson’s psychological theory in that both concerns the young adult’s identity crisis or role confusion. It is during this phase that the young adult first gains independence (financial or otherwise) and leaves the home. This is a transitional stage because it marks the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood.
8. Describe cognitive changes during middle adulthood.
Brain Functioning The brain at midlife has been shown to not only maintain many of the abilities of young adults, but also gain new ones. Some individuals in middle age actually have improved cognitive functioning in some areas (Phillips, 2011). The brain continues to demonstrate plasticity and rewires itself in middle age based on experiences. Research has demonstrated that healthy middle-aged and older adults sometimes use more of their brains than younger adults in performing the same mental task. This is usually interpreted as the brain making up for negative changes in brain functioning with age by using more of the brain. Some studies show that older adults who perform the best on tasks are more likely to demonstrate bilateralization than those who perform worst. Additionally, the amount of white matter in the brain, which is responsible for forming connections among neurons, increases into the 50s in some people before it declines. Maintaining and building on physical and mental health promotes this positive trajectory. Emotionally, the middle aged brain is calmer, less neurotic, more capable of managing emotions, and better able to negotiate social situations (Phillips, 2011). Older adults tend to focus more on positive information and less on negative information than those younger. In fact, they also remember positive images better than those younger. Additionally, the older adult’s amygdala responds less to negative stimuli. Lastly, in general adults in middle adulthood make better financial decisions than they did when younger. As knowledge banks (crystallized intelligence) increase, we show better
economic understanding as we transition from being younger to being between younger and older adulthood. Physical activity, mental challenge, and social engagement promote the ongoing dynamism of development and increase the likelihood that a person in middle age will show improvements in some areas of thinking. Communities and societies can do a lot to support and foster this growth. Intergenerational teams, classes, organizations, and communities can synergize societal growth and support the development of each cohort. Crystalized versus Fluid Intelligence Intelligence is influenced by heredity, culture, social contexts, personal choices, and certainly age. One distinction in specific intelligences noted in adulthood, is between fluid intelligence , which refers to the capacity to learn new ways of solving problems and performing activities quickly and abstractly , and crystallized intelligence , which refers to the accumulated knowledge of the world we have acquired throughout our lives (Salthouse, 2004). These intelligences are distinct, and crystallized intelligence increases with age, while fluid intelligence tends to decrease with age (Horn, Donaldson, & Engstrom, 1981; Salthouse, 2004). Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence Across the Lifespan (adapted from Horn, Donaldson, & Engstrom,
Research demonstrates that older adults have more crystallized intelligence as reflected in semantic knowledge, vocabulary, and language. As a result, adults generally outperform younger people on measures of history, geography, and even on crossword puzzles, where this information is useful (Salthouse, 2004). It is this superior knowledge, combined with a slower and more complete processing style, along with a more sophisticated understanding of the workings of the world around them, that gives older adults the advantage of “wisdom” over the advantages of fluid intelligence which favor the young (Baltes, Staudinger, & Lindenberger, 1999; Scheibe, Kunzmann, & Baltes, 2009). The differential changes in crystallized versus fluid intelligence help explain why older adults do not necessarily show poorer performance on tasks that also require experience (i.e., crystallized intelligence), although they show poorer memory overall. A young chess player may think more quickly, for instance, but a more experienced chess player has more knowledge to draw on.
Type # 3. The Emotionally Disturbed Children: The emotionally disturbed children include those with behaviour problems and those who are socially maladjusted or the delinquents. The causes of emotional disturbance or social maladjustment are a breakdown in the family constellation, a developmental disturbance, an economic, social or ethnic or religious conflict, unhappy home and school life generating all sorts of emotional insecurity, overcrowding in houses and schools, lack of individual attention, absence of individualized instruction, primitive discipline and ego- deflating methods of teaching or handling at home. These children need special care and attention. They may disrupt the rest of the class by their irregular class attendance, may place under pressure on the teacher and may not be able to learn because of their own inner conflicts and anxieties. Such children need the help of child guidance specialists and a mental hygiene approach. Type # 4. The Multi-Handicapped or Multiple-Handicapped Child: The multi-handicapped or multiple-handicapped child has a problem of exceptionality which is highly complicated. Children may be mentally retarded as well as speech handicapped. They may be at the time suffering from epilepsy. They may have cerebral palsy with mental retardation and epilepsy. They may be deaf, blind and mentally handicapped. They may be mentally defective, speech handicapped and suffer at the same time from behaviour disturbances. Very little research has been done in this area so far. Hence chances of their rehabilitation are meagre
10. Cross-sectional method
A cross-sectional study looks at data at a single point in time. The participants in this type of study are selected based on particular variables of interest. Cross-sectional studies are often used in developmental psychology, but this method is also used in many other areas, including social science and education. Cross-sectional studies are observational in nature and are known as descriptive research, not causal or relational, meaning that you can't use them to determine the cause of something, such as a disease. Researchers record the information that is present in a population, but they do not manipulate variables. This type of research can be used to describe characteristics that exist in a community, but not to determine cause-and-effect relationships between different variables. This method is often used to make inferences about possible relationships or to gather preliminary data to support further research and experimentation. Some of the key characteristics of a cross-sectional study include:
- The study takes place at a single point in time
- It does not involve manipulating variables
- It allows researchers to look at numerous characteristics at once (age, income, gender, etc.)
- It's often used to look at the prevailing characteristics in a given population
- It can provide information about what is happening in a current population
Advantages of Cross-Sectional Studies Inexpensive and Fast Can Assess Multiple Variables Might Prompt Further Study
11. Grammar and pragmatics
As grammatical constructions might be more or less lexi-cally fixed and more or less restricted to, e.g., semantic classes of verbs, the bound-ary between lexicon and grammar is at best fuzzy, and may be better conceived ofas a continuum (Croft 2008). “Pragmatics” here is also used in a wide sense, refer-ring to the use of language in context. In this way, it encompasses cognitive pre-conditions and functions of language, such as attention, memory, conceptualiz-ation, categorization, and inference, as well as interactional uses, such as transferof knowledge, turn-taking, speech acts, and rhetorical functions, displays of emo-tion and epistemic stance, and indexing social identities and relationships. a) The role of pragmatics for grammar
- Which pragmatic factors have an impact on grammar? Candidate factorsinclude cognitive, interactional, situational, cultural, and bodily factors.
- Which role do pragmatic factors play in defining grammatical structures?Can or should grammatical structure be defined on a pure formal basis ordoes it ultimately rest on functional categories?
- How is pragmatics involved in parsing and interpreting grammatical con-structions?
- Which grammatical phenomena are governed by pragmatic factors both interms of their diachronic emergence and regarding their situated use?
- How does usage shape grammar over time?– Which role do pragmatic uses and contexts play in the acquisition ofknowledge about grammar? b) The role of grammar for pragmatics– How are grammatical structures adapted to pragmatic preferences andfunctions?– How are they adapted to their interactive and situational context?– How is grammatical structure used as a flexible tool for speakers’ prag-matic concerns? A useful distinction can be drawn between grammar and (morpho)syntax. I take the term "grammar" to refer to the body of system-internal rules which controls large portions of morphosyntax, phonology, and perhaps semantics. Thus grammar is, by definition, taken to deal with internal explanations in Hyman's (1984) sense. Yith this understanding, I will illustrate here that not all of morphosyntax need be controlled by grammar; a certain amount may be controlled directly from syntax-external considerations, such as from the area of discourse-pragmatics. Another way to state this would be to say that not all syntactic regularity or all rules of syntax, need be grammatical. To the extent that this is so, we use "autonomous" as a restrictive modifier when we speak of autonomous (morpho)syntax. Extralinguistic factors can influence morphosyntax both through the mediation of grammar, as noted by Chomsky and Newmeyer, or more directly, as will be illustrated, in lieu of grammar. In regard to a given syntactic phenomenon, it is always appropriate to ask whether it is best described grammatically or by an external explanation; in many cases, it is profitable to identify
