an article of Mª Rosa Ovejero Arranz
Clinical Psychologist Social Health Center
He psychological profile It refers to the set of characteristics that a person gathers and that determine their character, attitudes, aptitudes and behaviors before a particular situation or before society as such.
Each person presents a unique psychological profile that shows their main features and their way of being. Older people continue to develop and perfect themselves at the behavioral level, although with a smaller increase than in previous stages. Throughout life there are psychological factors that experience gains and other losses.
There is great variability between psychological processes and functions, as well as between the behaviors of people at this stage of life. People arrive here with different experiences and experiences due to the state of their organism as well as the circumstances that they have had to live and their own learning story.
The psychosocial situations and the personality of the elderly can change depending on the state of health, degree of autonomy, and changes that may affect them. Hence the older person cannot be pigeonholed within certain prototypes. He psychological aging of a person is the result of the action of time lived and perceived by her on her personality.
Following R. Fernandez Ballesteros, we are going to refer to the changes produced by age in the most important psychological functions, such as cognitive functions and affective functions.
Cognitive functions
It’s important pointing that older people have a broad learning capacity. During the aging process there is a slowing down and less efficiency of cognitive functioning. Although these changes occur very early in life, older people take longer to respond to the information they receive, especially when the tasks required of them require many attentional resources. Despite the memory complaints in the elderly, only working (operative) and episodic memory seem to suffer negative changes associated with age.
The cognitive or intellectual functions They are expressed in a psychological structure that is intelligence, understood as the ability to adapt to the environment, or as a set of skills that allow solving contextually relevant problems.
The fluid intelligence (biological) which refers to verbal fluency, aptitudes, perceptual speed, reasoning or spatial aptitudes, usually declines after the age of 30.
The crystallized intelligence (cultural), which is related to vocabulary, comprehension, information skills, etc., once it reaches a plateau it remains constant or may even increase until advanced ages.
There also seems to be evidence that intellectual activity and exerciseHe, such as doing crossword puzzles, board games, etc., improve this functioning in old age. Even people who engage in intellectual activity in their daily lives are less likely to have dementia problems.
In older people, along with the decline that may occur, it is also known that positive changes in intellectual functioning. Bales et al. They identify it as abody of expert knowledge in the pragmatics of life”.
Epicurus in his letter to Medeo said: “both the young and the old must love wisdom; this one so that feeling old he rejuvenates and that one so that he is young and old at the same time”. The wisdom it is a cognitive attribute with emotional and intellectual components.
affective functions
As an important psychological domain, feelings and emotions make up the affectivity. People are emotional organisms in which intelligence is intermingled with feeling and passion. The best predictors of affectivity are personality and intellectual functioning.
In this stage of life, situations such as illnesses, multiple pathologies, loss of loved ones, departure of children and, sometimes, disability and/or dependency occur, as well as being a moment that can be perceive that the end of life is near. Along with this, other negative situations can occur that sometimes produce affective reactions such as: depression, loneliness and suffering.
However, several investigations explain that there is no influence of age on the verbal expression of the experience of happiness and that older people do not express less happiness, well-being or satisfaction with life compared to younger ones.
In studies in which compares affectivity at different stages between the ages of 18 and over 90, it is concluded that:
- Older people experience emotions with the same intensity and frequency than when you are younger.
- Starting in the 60s, the negative emotional experience is less frequent. At these ages, more “happiness, gratitude, joy” is expressed than “sadness, frustration…”
- The conclusion of authors who investigate the affective world, such as Catersen, age allows for greater cohesion between cognition and affectwhich favors a greater regulation of emotion in this stage of life, which leads to a maximization of positive aspects and minimization of negative ones.
In conclusion, it seems that in the cognitive world of the elderly, there are negative changes due to age and in the affective world seem to occur positive changes linked to a decline in emotionality negative that some authors have conceptualized as a better integration or emotional elaboration.