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Development Through the Lifespan
2nd edition
Laura E. Berk
Chapter 13
Physical and Cognitive Development in
Early Adulthood
PowerPoint Presentations Produced by:
Joe Rizzo - Professor of Behavioral Sciences
Rick Lizotte - Curriculum Developer
Felix Rizvanov - Instructional Designer
Northern Essex Community College
2001 Allyn & Bacon, Berk 2/e
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Development Through the Lifespan
2nd edition
Berk
Chapter 13
Physical and Cognitive Development in
Early Adulthood
2001 Allyn & Bacon, Berk 2/e
2
PHYSICAL
DEVELOPMENT
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LIFE EXPECTANCY
• Average life expectancy
– Number of years an individual born in a particular year can
expect to live
• United States is nineteenth of the world's nations.
• America in
– 1900 - 50 years
– 1997- 76.5 years
• Improved nutrition, medical treatment, sanitation,
safety, and declines in infant mortality
• Women live 4 to 7 more years than men.
• Varies substantially by SES, ethnic group
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• Maximum lifespan
LIFE EXPECTANCY (cont.)
– The genetic limit to length of life for a person free of external risk
factors
• Varies between 70 and 110 for most people, with 85 to 90
average; the oldest verified age is 122 years.
• Active lifespan
– For Americans, 64 years
Figure 13.1
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THEORIES OF BIOLOGICAL AGING
• Aging DNA and Body Cells
– Programmed effects of specific genes
– Cumulative effects of random events damaging
genetic material
– Longevity is a family trait.
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Aging of DNA and Body Cells
• Programmed theory
– Aging genes control biological changes.
• Menopause, gray hair, and deterioration of body cells
• Human cells have a lifespan of 50 divisions plus or
minus 10.
• Random view
– DNA is damaged by mutations.
• Free radicals, naturally occurring, are highly reactive
chemicals that form in the presence of oxygen.
– Genes for longevity defend against free radicals.
– Vitamins C and E and beta-carotene
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Aging of Organs and Tissue
• Cross-linkage theory
– Protein fibers in connective tissue form bonds,
or links.
– Tissue becomes less elastic.
– Reduced by regular exercise and vitamin-rich,
low-fat diet
• Gradual decline of endocrine system and
immune system
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Cardiovascular and Respiratory Systems
Figure 13.3
• Hypertension
occurs 12% more
often in American
blacks than
whites.
• Death from heart
disease occurs
more often in
blacks than
whites, over 47%.
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Cardiovascular and Respiratory Systems (cont.)
• Heart shows decline when stressed by
exercise.
• Atherosclerosis
– Heavy deposits of plaque containing
cholesterol and fats on walls of main arteries
• It is hard to separate biological aging
from individual genetic and
environmental influences.
• Heart disease decreased over the last
15 years due to changes in diet, exercise,
cigarette smoking, and treatment.
• Lungs show changes during exertion.
– Respiratory volume decreases and breathing
rate increases.
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Motor Performance
• Biological aging in motor
skills is hard to separate
from decreases in
motivation and practice.
• Upper limit of motor
capacity is reached in
the first part of early
adulthood.
• Lower performance in
older healthy people
results from a less
physically demanding
lifestyle.
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Figure 13.4
Age of Peak
Performance for
Olympic Athletes
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Immune System
• Immune response
– Specialized cells neutralize or destroy antigens.
• T cells
– Originate in bone marrow, mature in the thymus, attack
antigens directly
• B cells
– Originate in bone marrow, secrete antibodies into the
bloodstream that multiply, capture antigens, and permit the
blood system to destroy them
– Capacity of the immune system increases through
adolescence; after age 20 it declines.
• The capacity of the immune system increases
through adolescence; after age 20 it declines.
• Stress can contribute to its decline.
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Reproductive Capacity
• First births to
women in their
thirties increased
over the past two
decades.
• The proportion of
women who
experience fertility
problems increases
from age 15 to 50.
• Age affects male
capacity, especially
after age 40.
Figure 13.5
First Births
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HEALTH AND FITNESS
• Nutrition
– Obesity (a 20 percent increase over
average body weight) is increasing in US.
• Heredity and environment
• Lives are sedentary.
• Calories and fat consumed have increased.
– Weight gain from age 25 to 50 normal
• Basal metabolic rate (BMR) declines as
number of active muscle cells drop.
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Nutrition (cont.)
• Moderate weight loss reduces health
problems substantially.
• 95 percent of individuals who start
weight-loss programs return to original
weight within 5 years.
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Nutrition (cont.)
• Treatment for adult obesity
– Low-fat diet plus exercise
– Keeping an accurate record of what they
eat
– Social support
– Teaching problem-solving skills
– Extended intervention
• Sensible body weight predicts
physical and psychological health
and longer life.
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Dietary Fat
• National health goal
– Reduce dietary fat to 30%, no more than 10 %
from saturated fat
• Fat linked to breast cancer, colon cancer, and
cardiovascular disease
• Saturated fat
– Meat and dairy products, solid at room
temperature
• Unsaturated fat
– Most vegetable oils, liquid at room temperature
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Exercise
• Frequent exercise of moderate intensity
– reduces body fat, builds muscle and immune
response.
– reduces obesity.
– implies other healthful behaviors.
– inhibits growth of cancerous tumors and enhances
cardiovascular functioning.
– Reduces anxiety and depression and enhances
alertness and energy.
– Is associated with lower death rates from all causes
• Exercise should be 20 minutes, 3 to 5 times a week,
with vigorous use of large muscles; heart rate should
be elevated to 60 to 90 percent of maximum
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Cigarette Smoking
• Down from 40 percent of American
adults in 1965 to 25 percent in 1997
• Most of drop among college graduates
• The earlier people start, the greater
their cigarette consumption.
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Cigarette Smoking
• Nicotine, tar, carbon
monoxide, and other
chemicals damage body.
– Mortality is dose related.
– Quitting returns disease
risks to nonsmoker levels in
3 to 8 years.
• Treatment programs or
cessation aids often fail.
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Alcohol
• 13 percent of men and 3 percent of women in
US are heavy drinkers.
• One-third of these alcoholics
• Genetic contribution, but 50% of alcoholics
have no family history
• Chronic alcohol use does widespread
damage.
• Costs to society enormous
• Treatments
– Comprehensive, with individual and family
counseling, group support, and aversion therapy
– 60 percent of alcoholics relapse within 3 months.
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Sexuality
• Heterosexual Attitudes and Behavior
– National Health and Social Life Survey (1994)
• Americans are less sexually active than expected.
– 33% of 18- to 59-year-olds have intercourse twice a week.
– 33% have it a few times a month.
– 33% have it a few times a year or not at all.
• Happy with sex lives
• As number of sex partners increases, satisfaction
declines.
– Satisfying sex is more than technique, attained in
the context of love, affection, fidelity
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Sexuality
• Homosexual Attitudes and Behavior
– AIDS increased homosexual visibility in US.
– Attitudes, though still negative, are beginning
to change.
– Homosexual sex life follows many of the
same patterns as heterosexual sex.
– Homosexuals often live where others have
their orientation, providing a social network.
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Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD)
• One in four Americans contracts an STD.
• The contraction is higher among women.
• AIDS declined among homosexuals due to
changing practices, but not among drug users
and their sexual partners.
• Containment
– Through sex education and access to health
services, condoms, and clean needles and syringes
for high-risk individuals
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Sexual Coercion
• 14 to 25 percent of women have been raped by
means of force, threats of harm, or when
incapable of giving consent.
• Majority of victims under age 30
• Rapists are mostly men the women know.
• Not SES and ethnic group dependent
• Rapists
– accept traditional gender roles.
– approve of violence against women.
– accept rape myths.
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Consequences of Sexual Coercion
• Psychological reaction is similar to other extreme
trauma.
• One-third to one-half of victims are physically
injured.
• Some contract STDs.
• Pregnancy results in about 5 percent of cases.
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Prevention and Treatment
of Sexual Coercion
• Therapy and contact with other
survivors
• Other features for recovery
– Routine screening for victimization
– Validation of the experience
– Safety planning
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Menstrual Cycle
• Premenstrual syndrome (PMS)
– Physical and psychological symptoms
usually appear 6 -10 days prior to
menstruation.
• 40 percent of women have some form,
usually mild.
• 10 percent have severe symptoms.
• Biological phenomena; no cure is
known.
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Psychological Stress
• Stress is related to a
variety of negative health
outcomes.
• Social support is a vital
health intervention
throughout the lifespan.
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COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
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CHANGES IN STRUCTURE OF THOUGHT
• Postformal thought
– Cognitive development beyond Piaget's formal
operational stage
• Perry's Theory
– Interviewed students at end of each year of college.
– Younger students—dualistic thinking
• Dividing information, values, and authority into right and
wrong, good and bad, we and they
– Older students—relativistic thinking
• No absolute truth—multiple truths, relative to context
– Adaptive cognition:
• less need to find one answer; more responsive to context
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Schaie's Theory
– Acquisitive stage (childhood and adolescence)
• Knowledge acquisition, from concrete to formal operational
thought
– Achieving stage (early adulthood)
• Adapt skills to situations for achieving long-term goals applying
knowledge to real life.
– Responsibility stage (middle adulthood)
• Responsibility to others on job, home, and community; most
advanced form
• Executive stage, in which responsibilities have become highly
complex
– Reintegrative stage (late adulthood)
• Reintegration of interests, attitudes, and values; elderly more
selective in expending cognitive energies
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Labouvie-Vief's Theory
• Pragmatic thought
– Structural advance in which logic
becomes the tool to solve realworld problems
• Pragmatic thinkers accept
inconsistencies as part of life and
develop thinking that thrives on
imperfection and compromise.
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INFORMATION PROCESSING
• Expertise
– Extensive knowledge in a field or endeavor
• Experts remember and reason more quickly and effectively.
• Experts approach problems with underlying principles in
mind.
• Create to fulfill a social or aesthetic need.
• Problem solving to problem finding in post-formal thought
• Creativity
– Rooted in expertise, but not all experts are creative
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CHANGES IN MENTAL ABILITIES
• Intelligence tests
not adequate for
assessing
competencies
relevant to many
adults
• Cross-sectional
studies show a
peak in intelligence
at age 35, then a
steep drop into old
age.
Figure 13.7
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Seattle Longitudinal Study
• Schaie applied longitudinalsequential design.
Figure 13.7
Verbal Ability
– Five mental abilities showed
typical cross-sectional drop.
– Longitudinal trends: Modest
gains appeared into the fifties
and early sixties, then
performance decreased
gradually.
– Cohort effects: Improvements
in education and health are
responsible for drops in
performance in crosssectional studies.
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COLLEGE EXPERIENCE
• Psychological Impact
– Gains in problem-solving
and moral development
– Greater self-understanding,
enhanced self-esteem,
firmer sense of identity
– Determined by involvement
in activities and the
richness of the campus
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Dropping Out of College
• 40 percent of freshmen drop
out.
– Nonacademic and academic
reasons
• Typical problems of early
adulthood
• More likely to stay if sense
the college is concerned
about them
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Selecting a Vocation
• Fantasy period (early and middle childhood)
• Tentative period (early and middle adolescence)
– Young teens evaluate in terms of interests; middle
adolescents, in terms of abilities and values
• Realistic period (late teens and early adulthood)
– Options narrowed based on realities
– Further exploration, then focus on vocational category
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Influence of Personality
• Six personality types affect vocational choice (Holland).
– Investigative person enjoys working with ideas; selects a
scientific occupation
– Social person likes interacting with people; selects human
services
– Realistic person prefers real-world problems; selects a
mechanical occupation
– Artistic person is emotional and high in need for individual
expression; selects an artistic field
– Conventional person likes well-structured tasks, values material
possessions and social status; selects business fields
– Enterprising person is adventurous, persuasive, a strong
leader; selects sales and supervisory positions
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Influence of Personality
(cont.)
• Many people are blends of personality types and
do well at more than one kind of occupation.
• Decisions are made in the context of family
background, educational opportunities, and life
circumstances.
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VOCATIONAL CHOICE
• Family Influences
– Jobs of parents correlate with
vocational choices.
– Higher-SES parents have more
information and connections for
high-status jobs.
– Parenting practices also shape
work-related values.
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Influence of Teachers
• High school teachers are mentioned most
often by college freshmen when asked who
had the greatest impact on their choice of a
field.
• The power of teachers as role models could
serve as a source of upward mobility for lowSES students.
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Gender Stereotypes
• Young men's
career
preferences are
strongly gender
stereotyped, but
not women's.
• Women's
progress in maledominated
professions has
been slow.
Table 13.2
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Gender Stereotypes
• Gender-stereotyped messages from
environment play a key role.
• During secondary school and college, the
career aspirations of academic females
decline.
• A need exists for programs that sensitize
school personnel to the problems women
face in developing and maintaining high
career aspirations.
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Access to Vocational Information
• Youths of all SES levels
and ethnicities are
ambitious.
– Half unaware of what is
involved in reaching goals
• Those with high
ambition/low knowledge
are at risk for becoming
drifting dreamers.
• Young people need to
learn about the work that
interests them.
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Vocational Prep of Non-College-Bound
• High school graduates have more work
opportunities than dropouts.
– But less than decades ago
• Most high school graduates are limited to
low-paid, unskilled jobs.
• School to work programs are needed.
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