Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle Adulthood

Changing Middle Age

Middle adulthood is the developmental period that begins at about age 40 and extends to about 60.

boundaries of middle age are being pushed upward.

Middle age is starting later and lasting longer.

Physical Changes

Noticeable Visible Changes

Usually the first outwardly visible signs of aging are apparent by the 40s or 50s.

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Height and Weight

Individuals now lose height and many gain weight.

Strength, Joints, and Bones

Muscle strength decreases noticeably by the mid 40s, particularly in the back and legs.

After the late 30s there is progressive bone loss.

Women experience about twice the rate of bone loss as men.

Vision

The ability of the eyes to focus and maintain an image on the retina experiences its sharpest decline between 40 and 59 years of age.

middle-aged individuals begin to have difficulty viewing close objects, causing many to wear bifocal glasses.

Hearing

Hearing may start to decline by age 40.

Sensitivity to high pitches declines first, while the ability to distinguish low-pitched sounds doesn’t seem to decline much in middle adulthood.

Men usually lose their sensitivity to high-pitched sounds sooner than women do.

Coronary arteries narrow.

Cholesterol level increases with age, and begins to accumulate on the artery walls by age 60. Artery walls thicken, blood pressure increases, and chance of stroke or heart attack increases.

Sleep

The total number of hours slept usually remains the same as in early adulthood.

Beginning in the 40s, however, wakeful periods are more frequent and there is less of the deepest type of sleep.

Health and Disease

The frequency of accidents now declines and people are less susceptible to colds and allergies.

Chronic disorders increase in middle adulthood.

Men have a higher incidence of fatal chronic conditions, while women have a higher incidence of nonfatal ones.

Culture, Personality, Relationships, and Health

Type A/Type B Behavioral Patterns

Type A - a cluster of characteristics—excessive competitiveness, hard drivenness, impatience, and hostility—thought to be related to the incidence of heart disease.

Type B - reflected in individuals who are relaxed and easy going.

Early research showed a profound link between type A behavior and coronary disease, which is now thought of as not quite as strong.

Hostility is the characteristic most consistently associated with coronary problems.

Hardiness

Hardiness is a personality style characterized by a sense of commitment, control, and a perception of problems as challenges.

Studies have shown individuals with a hardy personality are less likely to succumb to illness when exposed to stressful situations.

Levels of illness dropped most dramatically when hardiness was combined with exercise and social support in the face of stress.

Health and Social Relationships

Health in middle age is also related to the current quality of social relationships.

Mortality Rates

Heart disease is the leading cause of death.

Cancer and cerebrovascular disease are second and third respectively.

Men experience higher mortality rates than women for all of the leading causes of death.

Sexuality

Menopause

The time in middle age, usually late 40s or early 50s, when a woman’s menstrual periods cease.

Hormonal Changes in Middle-Aged Men

Men experience hormonal changes in their 50s and 60s, but nothing like the dramatic drop in estrogen that women experience.

Sexual Attitudes and Behavior

The ability of men and women to function sexually shows little biological decline in middle adulthood.

Intelligence

Fluid intelligence - one’s ability to reason abstractly, begins to decline in middle adulthood.

Crystallized intelligence - an individual’s accumulated information and verbal skills, continues to increase in middle adulthood.

Seattle Longitudinal Study

Schaie investigated the individual change and stability in intelligence across the life span.

K. Warner Schaie found that perceptual speed begins to decline in early adulthood and continues to decline in middle adulthood.

Memory

In Schaie’s study, verbal memory peaked in the 50s.

In other studies, verbal memory has shown a decline, particularly when assessed cross-sectionally.

Expertise

Expertise involves having an extensive, highly organized knowledge and understanding of a particular domain.

Developing expertise is usually the result of many years of experience, learning, and effort.

Because it takes so long to obtain, expertise often shows up more in middle adulthood than in early adulthood.

Strategies of the Experts

Experts are more likely to rely on their accumulated experience to solve problems.

Experts often automatically process information and analyze it more efficiently when solving a problem than a novice does.

Experts have better strategies and short-cuts to solving problems in their domain than novices do.

Experts are more creative and flexible in solving problems in their domain than novices are.

Practical Problem Solving

Nancy Denney observed problem solving abilities in adults as they dealt with such circumstances as a bank error, and an irresponsible landlord.

She found that the ability to solve such practical problems increased through the 40s and 50s as individuals accumulated practical experience.

Job Satisfaction

Work satisfaction increases steadily throughout the work life, from age 20 to 60.

Career Challenges and Changes

Globalization has replaced the traditional White male work force with employees of different ethnic and national backgrounds.

The proliferation of computer technology compels middle-aged adults to become increasingly computer literate to maintain their work competence.

Many companies are offering incentives to get middle-aged employees to retire early.

Some individuals decide that they don’t want to do the same work they’ve been doing, forever.

Leisure

Leisure refers to the pleasant times after work when individuals are free to pursue activities and interests of their own choosing—hobbies, sports, reading.

Some developmentalists believe that middle age is a time of questioning how time should be spent and of reassessing priorities.

For many, middle adulthood is the first time in their lives when they have the opportunity to diversify their interests.

Religion and Adult Lives

In the recent McArthur Study of Midlife Development, more than 70% of the individuals said they are religious and consider spirituality a major part of their lives.

About one-half said they attend religious services less than once a month or never.

Females have consistently shown a stronger interest in religion than males have.

Although many Americans show a strong interest in religion and believe in God, they also show a declining faith in mainstream religious institutions.

Religion and Health

Several studies have documented that religious commitment had a protective influence on blood pressure rates.

Possible reasons for these connections

Coping

Recently researchers have found that some styles of religious coping are associated with high levels of personal initiative and competence.

Happiness

A number of researchers have found that religiously active individuals report greater happiness than do those who are religiously inactive.

Meaning in Life

Victor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning emphasized each person’s uniqueness and the finiteness of life.

Frankl said that the three most distinct human qualities are spirituality, freedom, and responsibility.

Frankl proposed that people need to ask themselves such questions as why they exist, what they want from life, and the meaning of their life.

Many individuals in middle age begin to ask these questions.