Course

Objective:

Learning Outcomes:

• Analyze the field of gerontology, models of aging, and stereotypes and demographics of aging populations
• Compare Piaget's stages of cognitive development to the changes in intellectual, memory, and problem solving abilities that occur in late adulthood
• Assess the purposes and limitations of clinical measures designed to assess patients' mental health, such as behavioral, cognitive, psychophysiological, and neuropsychological assessment measures
• Categorize causes and treatments for generalized anxiety and panic disorders, substance disorders, cognitive disorders, depressive disorders and the treatments for these disorders
• Describe the family relationships, friendships, love relationships, occupational cycles, how these cycles differ among minorities and women and retirement and leisure time
• Relate the five factor model of dispositional traits and various major figures theories on personality
• Examine the common physical, psychological and emotional changes, chronic health conditions and physical changes occurring to the nervous, muscle, skeletal, integumentary, sensory, circulatory, respiratory, endocrine, and reproductive systems during aging
• Review the ways in which attention processing speeds, sensory memory, long-term memory, implicit and explicit memory, and working memory are affected by the aging process
• Break down intelligence testing and research methods, theories of psychopathology and various classifications of lifespan development disorder
• Explain the stages of dying, grief, and bereavement alongside the history of hospice care and the debate over euthanasia

General Topics: