How Care Givers Can Help the Elderly

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person creative? In what ways do you think creativity can be supported and enhanced by the environment?

What makes a person creative is the combination of imagination and will and exercising of that interaction. A creative person is one who can do things in a unique way -- one who is imaginative and likes to take part in the creative process by developing ideas and utilizing latent skills within the individual that all concepts and expressions to be manifested in any number of ways. Creativity stems from a desire to produce works, whether art or writing or sewing or knitting or architecture -- anything that one can put the mind to accomplishing -- in a manner that is pleasing. It does not even have to be something that is aesthetically pleasing to all. For some creative people, what they make is only admired by a few or maybe even by no one but themselves. However, if no one likes what they create, it does not mean that they are not creative: it might simply mean they were not trying to appeal to popular taste.

According to Cavanaugh and Blanchard-Fields (2014), a creative person is one who is able to be productive in a "novel" way, that people like (making the product to be "high in demand"), and that is appropriate to the task (p. 211). In this sense, creativity is something that fits in with what the end goal of the product is meant to be: for example, it would not be very creative to design a car that has wings (because then it would defeat the purpose of being a car). However, it would be creative to design a car that is completely automated.

Creativity can be supported and enhanced by the environment because there is a give and take between persons and their surroundings: we often reflect the world around us and our imagination and will are informed by our environment. Thus, if our environment is encouraging to creativity, then we are more likely to be creative. If our environment is stifling and not stimulating, the creative impulse might be incapacitated from underuse.

2. How would you describe a "wise" person? Does your definition match with what psychologists consider wisdom to consist of? Discuss why our common understanding of wisdom may differ from an academic approach toward wisdom.

A wise person is one who has a deep understanding of the world and himself -- of the nature of things. It is not necessarily an accumulation of knowledge that leads to wisdom but rather an ability to empathize, reflect, and meditate upon life and how life's expressions are manifested in their myriad ways. Moreover, a wise person is one who can make good judgments and shows good, ethical conduct in his own behavior: in short, he acts as an example of right conduct, sound judgment and virtue and is able to act as a guide for others. A good example of a wise person is Socrates, who demonstrated virtue and guidance.

This definition fits appropriately with the definition of Cavanaugh and Blanchard-Fields (2014), which holds that a wise person is noted primarily for having the ability to deal "with important or difficult matters of life and the human condition," has a great sense of knowledge, can give advice, has virtue, and sees deeply into things (p. 211). This psychological definition is appropriate across cultures and indicates that wisdom is a universal attribute.

My definition of wisdom is similar to the above definition but our common understanding of wisdom might be different from an academic understanding in the sense that it is based more on a feeling or personal experience. We feel that one is wise when we see them exercising caution or giving us guidance but we do not always consider how his wisdom is accrued -- whether through the experience of culture or learning or deep human feeling/compassion, and so on.

3. Cognitive theorists believe that one's perception of what one did or is more important than what one actually has done or who one really is. Given this, what advice might you give to someone taking care of a person with Alzheimer's disease?

From this perspective, it is important to appreciate the way in which the patient sees him or herself and to not attempt to dissuade them from this perspective if it is not necessary to do so. As Carstensen (2012) notes, the "misery myth" of old age is just that -- a myth and we often view persons suffering from a disease like Alzheimer's as really suffering because they forget who they are (or rather who we are accustomed to viewing them as).

To someone who is taking care of an Alzheimer's patient, I could recommend that they not attempt to constantly remind the patient of who they are because this can be upsetting to the patient.

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If the patients requests help remembering someone or something, then the caretaker can respond accordingly. But there is no need to constantly harp on perceptions and memories. In most cases, the patient is content to go about his or her day without having to deal with such struggles; and if the patient is content, the caretaker should be as well.

As Valerie Abel (2013) observes, "it is very important to have someone who is able to address the cognitive piece of what is going on with patients" and this is important for Alzheimer's patients, who are losing part of their cognitive ability. One would not constantly remind an amputee of his or her missing member; therefore, why would one constantly attempt to remind an Alzheimer's patient of his missing memories? It can be very insensitive actually to do so, and even more harmful than not. Thus one who is caring for such patients should practice patience and understanding and not attempt to force issues.

4. To what degree are the declines in processing resource capacity discussed in Chapters 6 and 7 present in social judgments of older adults? How does social cognition relate to post-formal thought?

The loss of processing resources can also diminish one's ability to exercise social judgments in older adults. They simply do not have the capacity to form impressions or to process information regarding sociality that younger persons might have. So while "post-formal thinking has its roots in young adulthood" (Cavanaugh, Blanchard-Fields, 2014, p. 202), by the time young adults have reached Stage 6 or 7 in development they have begun to understand that reason and experience play a part in forming understanding and judgments. This is what allows the adult to make rationalized assessments of himself and the world around him. As older individuals lose processing resource capacity, their ability to make social judgments also diminishes precisely because they do not have the ability to process those impressions gained over a lifetime of experience which would otherwise inform the opinion. They are essentially cut off from these gathered and accumulated impressions and ideas and thus have no opinion to offer other than that which is most immediately retrievable (from automatic response, for example).

With Alzheimer's this process is reverted and the mind begins to lose this capacity to process information according to the methods learned in young adulthood. Social cognition does not play a role in this situation because the patient has lost the capacity to integrate social cognition with the reasoning/judgment-making process. Whereas in young adulthood, the individual's processing ability develops as a result of social cognitive abilities, which influence the perception of the individual in terms of formulating rational responses. With older adults, the degree of social judgments is directly proportional to the degree of declines in processing resource capability. The less capability that the older adult has to process the resources available to it, the less likely the adult is to formulate social judgments.

5. What might we be able to do as a society to encourage positive age stereotypes and to discourage negative ones? How might we go about enhancing the personal control experienced by older adults?

To encourage positive age stereotypes it may be necessary to promote representations of elderly people that are not cynical or negative: instead, in popular entertainment, aging could be represented as a happy and peaceful experience, and the loss of memory and processing abilities as natural and normal and not something to be feared. Discouraging negative stereotypes can be as simple as educating the public on what the aging process is like, what it is about, what causes certain behaviors in the elderly (such as memory loss), and how it can be empathetically addressed rather than "fixed" or curtailed. The main point is that aging should be accepted and understood and in this way negative stereotypes can be reduced.

We may enhance the personal control experience of older adults by harnessing their capacity for meeting life's basic demands and empowering them to achieve objectives on their own in spite of the loss of certain mental processing skills. Such actions as do….....

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