BEHS210 WEEK 5 DISCUSSION RESPONSE 2 DAVID

Week 5 Discussion- David Washam

David Washam posted Nov 15, 2023 13:49

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I chose resources that represented psychology and anthropology for this week’s discussion.

Psychology

The source helped me better understand cognitive aging. Cognitive aging refers to the ability to perform certain cognitive tasks with age. Diminished recall of information, slower processing speed, and less efficient working memory are all examples of cognitive aging (Queen & Smith, 2020). The source gave support to the saying that one is only as old as one feels. How old a person feels and sees themselves, or one’s subjective age, is studied by life span and life course psychologists (Queen & Smith, 2020). The source helped me further understand how social support relationships are important to aging people. Not necessarily physically helping an aging parent, but knowing the support is there if needed is helpful. According to the Convoy Model of Social Relations, relationships rely on the perception that help is there if the need arises. The article discussed how psychology researchers found that a person’s emotional health and having good relationships may be directly linked to optimizing one’s quality of life in the older years.

Anthropology

The source helped me to understand that aging changes one’s perception of themselves. Many changes occur while aging: external appearance, social roles, self-identity, and physical abilities (Christensen, 2013). As one ages through different stages in life, how one thinks of oneself and personal identity changes as well. Working and contributing to society is an important part of most people’s lives. When it comes time to retire, most people have difficulty with the change of role and social status when no longer working. The article helped me better understand how society affects one’s attitude and beliefs about aging, specifically the culture and location in which they reside.

If I only looked at aging from one social science perspective, I would miss the other theories and concepts offered by the other social sciences. Viewing aging through all the social sciences helps offer better explanations for how aging affects people as individuals and as a collective group. One explanation or theory of aging is not better than the other, but different. The consequences of a social scientist having incomplete knowledge of a topic limit their perception and full understanding of the topic, which would likely lead to incomplete and incorrect conclusions.

Resources

Christensen, J. (2013). 
Aging: Deviation. Society for Cultural Anthropology. 

https://culanth.org/fieldsights/aging-deviation

Queen, T. & Smith, J. (2020). 
Aging. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba Textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. 

https://nobaproject.com/modules/aging