CHAPTER OUTLINE

Prejudice and Predictions

Believing the Stereotype

The Demographic Shift

Ongoing Senescence

Selective Optimization

Cognition

The Aging Brain

Information Processing After Age 65

A VIEW FROM SCIENCE: Learning Late in Life

Aging and Disease

Primary and Secondary Aging

Compression of Morbidity

Neurocognitive Disorders

The Ageism of Words

Mild and Major Impairment Prevalence of NCD

Preventing Impairment

Reversible Neurocognitive

Disorder? OPPOSING PERSPECTIVES: Too Many Drugs or Too Few?

New Cognitive Development

Erikson and Maslow

Aesthetic Sense and Creativity

Wisdom

The Centenarians

WHAT WILL YOU KNOW?

•   What percentage of older people are in nursing homes?
•   At what age is it no longer possible to learn new things?
• Is forgetting names the first sign of neurocognitive disorder?
• Is wisdom always, sometimes, or never characteristic of the elderly? The young?

I took Asa, age 1, to the playground. One mother, watching her son, warned me that the sandbox would be crowded before long because the children from a nearby daycare centre would soon arrive. I asked questions, and to my delight she explained details of the centre’s curriculum, staffing, scheduling, and tuition as if I were Asa’s mother, weighing my options for next year.

Soon I realized she probably was merely being polite, because a girl too young to be graciously ageist glanced at me and asked: “Is that your grandchild?”

I nodded.

“Where is the mother?” was her next question.

Later that afternoon came the final blow. As I opened the gate for a middle-aged man, he said, “Thank you, young lady.” I don’t think I look old, but no one would imagine I was young. That “young lady” was benevolent, but it made me realize that my pleasure at the first woman’s words was a sign of my own, self-deceptive prejudice. ·