Developmental Psychology

Dementia is no longer considered a normal part of aging but rather a disease process.

Dementia was originally thought to be an infectious disease but is now seen as psychological disorder.

Understanding has moved from seeing it as hereditary to believing it's caused by lifestyle factors.

Society moved from considering dementia incurable to finding effective treatments for it.

Guaranteeing anonymity to all participants

Ensuring informed consent is fully understood and voluntary

Providing debriefing sessions after the experiment

Offering compensation for participation in the study

Asking retirees to recall memories from when they were still working.

Analyzing retirees' spending habits relative to their income levels before retirement.

Giving retirees puzzles and observing how they solve them before and after retirement.

Using a mixed-method approach, combining surveys for quantifiable data and interviews for qualitative insight from pre-retirement through post-retirement phases.

Limiting participant involvement based on the severity of disease progress.

Making sure the results support existing theories about Alzheimer's disease

Avoiding open conversation about Alzheimer's due to potential emotional discomfort.

Ensuring respectful treatment of participants who may have impaired decision-making abilities due to their condition.

Limiting physical activities due to health risks

Maintaining active roles and engagements in society

Isolating themselves from society

Focusing solely on retirement planning

Crystallized intelligence

Fluid intelligence

Processing speed

Working memory

They experience natural memory decline, making it difficult to maintain a large social network.

They prioritize emotionally meaningful relationships, leading to a smaller, closer-knit social network.

They face increased time pressures which inadvertently cause reductions in their social connections.

They develop greater self-efficacy that leads them to seek out larger and more diverse social networks.

Piaget's stages of cognitive development

Kohlberg's stages of moral development

Freud’s psychosexual stages

Erikson’s stage of ego integrity versus despair

Ensuring that all age groups receive equal time attention during testing despite potential differences in processing speed among cohorts.

Determining appropriate types compensation reflects recognition differing resource needs depending participant ages.

Deciding against whom younger adult performance should be normed—same-age peers or across all cohorts included in study designs.

Accounting for cohort effects could inadvertently reveal information about historical biases affecting specific age groups more than others.

It states that elderly individuals prefer solitary activities for personal fulfillment.

It suggests that social isolation increases with age due to reduced emotional capacity.

It says aging individuals tend to avoid social interactions due to physical limitations.

It posits that as people age, they prioritize emotionally meaningful interactions over acquiring new information.