HUDV 1015 Writing 6

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HUDV 1015 Ramona Jones 10/11/23 M6 Assignment - Essay on Old Age Assignment Aging is a normal and unescapable process that occurs for all humans. The last stage of this process is late adulthood which refers to the period after a person reaches their mid-sixties until death (Lally & Valentine-French, 2017). There are many physical changes that occur as an individual reach this stage in their lives. I was previously only aware of some of these changes that occur such as wrinkles, hair loss, and increased risk for many illnesses. However, after reading chapter 9 of Lally and Valentine-French (2017), I leaned that aging generally causes heart muscles to thicken, arteries to become less flexible, lung capacity to diminish, kidneys to become less efficient in removing waste from the blood, the bladder to lose its ability to store urine, and brain cells to lose some functioning. Reading all the physical changes your body goes through as you enter old age made me a little frightened to get to that stage. However, the Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition by Park and Reuter-Lorenz (2009) explains that the brain adapts to the dying of brain cells by building alternate connections (Lally & Valentine- French, 2017). This theory explains that the brain attempts to compensate for the effects of aging by forming alternate neural connections within the brain. This was very encouraging to me to learn that as we age, although our bodies don’t function as well as they did when we were younger, our bodies naturally still try to compensate for this change so that we can function even at old age. Therefore, knowing this was very comforting because as scary as physical changes might be, it is important to remember that getting old is a natural part of life and that no one can live forever, so embracing all the changes that come with life and taking steps to improve your health and happiness is all any one can do. Moreover, many cognitive changes occur when one enters old age as well. My grandmas on both sides of my family suffer from dementia and one of them sadly died from complications from the disease so I saw first-hand the potential cognitive problems that an elderly person can develop. My grandma that is still alive developed the disease a lot later in her life than my grandma that died so I was able to see the difference between her memory as she naturally aged and the memory changes caused by dementia. The processing speed theory suggests that for older individuals, the nervous system becomes slower, and this causes a decline in their ability to process information (Lally & Valentine-French, 2017). When thinking back to this my grandma, I surely noticed a decline in her ability to process information before she developed dementia because it took her longer to make decisions compared to when she was younger. Learning that this could be caused by the decline in the speed of the nervous system helps to give me more insight into the potential reasons why these deficits occur. Furthermore, because of these significant changes that occur when someone ages, there is a recognition that the outlook that the individual has on the aging process is very important. Erikson theorizes that Integrity vs Despair is the last psychosocial stage in which an individual looks back at their life and embraces how well they lived their life and what opportunities they’ve missed (Lally & Valentine-French, 2017). This theory made me feel sad for older people and the fact that they have to look back on their life and face death. Although death is inevitable, having the right

mindset and accepting what happened in life can be the difference between living in despair and enjoying the rest of the time on Earth. There have been many theories regarding the process of aging. One such theorists, Robert Peck, described the middle life described the conflicts that impact those in their middle and late adulthood stages as “mental flexibility versus mental rigidity, emotional flexibility versus emotional impoverishment, socializing versus sexualizing in human relationships, and valuing wisdom versus physical powers” (Bell, 2021). Peck believed that these conflicts helped those in the middle and late stages of adulthood to accept the limits of their body and to creatively think about ways to get around these limits as well as the importance of controlling one’s emotions as they age (Robertson, n.d.). Peck also thought that there were conflicts of body transcendence over body pro-occupation, ego differentiation over work role pre- occupation, and ego transcendence over ego pre-occupation. The idea behind these conflicts is that the older adult is now developing their life outside of work, having to pay attention but not obsess about their health, and accept death by focusing on others. Peck’s work influenced the way I thought about older adulthood especially with respect to References Bell, J. D. (2021). Peck and the blue collar worker mentality - arjonline.org. https://www.arjonline.org/uploads/SpecialIssue/21/99378GA1.pdf Robertson, D. N. (n.d.). 1 adult development and learning of older adults - ed. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED490439.pdf

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