Kail/Cavanaugh’s Human Development: A Life-Span View 5e

Chapter 13

Learning Objectives

Physical Changes and Health

  • Explain the physical changes that cause wrinkles, gray hair, baldness, and middle-aged bulge.
  • Describe the causes and possible prevention of osteoporosis, and explain why it is more common in women than in men.
  • Describe changes in the joints and problems such as osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.
  • Describe the physical changes that occur in women during the climacteric.
  • Explain how ethnicity and culture are related to menopause.
  • Describe how reproductive technology has changed the age of childbearing.
  • Describe the risks and benefits associated with hormone replacement therapy.
  • Describe changes in men’s fertility with age.
  • Describe the changes that occur in men’s sexual functioning with age.
  • Describe how control over one’s job is related to stress.
  • Describe how reported stress differs by age and gender.
  • Describe the stress and coping paradigm.
  • Describe how stress is related to one’s physical health.
  • Define Type A and Type B behavior patterns, and explain how both are related to cardiovascular disease.
  • Describe how stress and psychological health are related.
  • Describe the physiological effects of exercise.
  • Describe changes across adulthood in the reasons why people exercise.

Cognitive Development

  • Define practical intelligence, and explain how it differs from traditional measures of intelligence.
  • Explain the difference between optimally exercised and unexercised abilities, and describe the developmental course of both.
  • Describe the applications of practical intelligence.
  • Explain the differences between the mechanics and pragmatics of intelligence.
  • Describe the differences in the thinking of experts and novices, and describe the developmental course of expert performance.
  • Define encapsulation and explain how it is related to the ability to explain how one arrives at a particular answer.
  • Explain why lifelong learning is becoming the norm.
  • Describe the four ways in which adult learners differ from younger learners.

Personality

  • Describe Costa and McCrae’s five dimensions of personality: neuroticism, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion.
  • Describe the evidence that personality traits remain stable across adulthood.
  • Describe the evidence for personality change during adulthood.
  • Describe how priorities change over the course of one’s lifetime.
  • Explain generativity and stagnation and ethnic differences in generativity.
  • Explain how changes in self-descriptions of genderrole are related to changes in behavior across adulthood.
  • Define midlife crisis, and explain whether or not it is universal.

Family Dynamics and Middle Age

  • Describe the role of kinkeeper that many middle-aged mothers assume.
  • Define what is meant by the sandwich generation.
  • Describe how the relationship between parents and children changes as children move from adolescence to young adulthood.
  • Explain how most parents feel when they have an empty nest.
  • Explain the reasons why adult children return home.
  • Describe the gender difference in caring for aging parents.
  • Define filial obligation.
  • Describe the two factors that contribute to negative feelings about caring for one’s aging parents.
  • Explain some of the psychological costs of caregiving.
  • Describe ethnic differences in adult caregivers’ stress.
  • Explain how personal and social dimensions of grandparenting influence grandparenting.
  • Describe the different meanings of grandparenthood.
  • Describe ethnic differences in grandparenthood.
  • Describe how the role of grandparent has changed in recent years.