Ok, ok ... Feeling a little better
Ok, ok … this is our pretty damn serious face.
Ok, ok … this is our going to be obstructed by kitty face. We’re not letting him stay though … cuz he’s laying all over the book. We can’t do that. Well, we’ll take a little look mentally of the question. Seems like its going to be an imaginative one.
u09d3 Decisions
Suppose you are the group leader of a task force comprising two groups of volunteers: high school students who are getting course credit for volunteering, and retired workers who want to volunteer their services to the community. Assuming that the trends regarding fluid versus crystallized intelligence apply to these individuals, what kinds of tasks would you assign to the younger and the older workers to take full advantage of their respective abilities? What specific cognitive and affective advantages do older adults have over younger adults?
Hmm, better outline first what each younger and older have going for them.
Paper …
As a group leader and an educational psychologist practitioner, I would suggest that my task force work through a two-week retreat with adult participants who are developmentally disabled in the goal of creating a new program for them. The program would develop from assessments made of the participants during the camp and would be advantageous to the participants, young folk, and old folk involved through the synergy of meeting with plenty of folk paying very close attention to one another. The program would focus on self-discovery of abilities. All the campers old, young, and anywhere in between would share the same space and function together as one unit.
Because of the younger people’s higher level of cognitive processing, I would have the older folks teaching the younger folk observational skills and testing processes. I would start with the young people performing individual inventories to gain ideas of the participants’ preferences. Next, there would be 12-20 processing tasks, or tests to complete for each participant. Next, there would be written observations made while the participants participated in a dozen group activities, such as games, sports, art, music, and campfires. The discrepancy in number of assessments would be based on the willingness of the participants to participate. Because the younger folk excel at fluidity, they would be taught by the older folk not only how to code scores and interactions, but how to accurately follow the individual participants consistently and over a relatively long period of many days. Due to their agility and coordination, they would also lead the participants through a physical survival task so that mental acuity could be gauged in context with physical strengths and weaknesses.
I would trust that because the younger folk have better central nervous and motor cortex functioning and higher sensory abilities they would be able to quickly shift gears as needed in the performance of so many challenges while staying attuned to the participants they were overseeing. I would ask the young folk to work side by side so that what one might miss, the other would back-up in testing and recording. I would have a written schedule of events, but I would know that because the young people had fairly good memories that I would only have to post one shared board of events in the mess tent for them to follow. I would assure they are particularly attentive to the verbal and gestural limitations of the participants and I would expect that they become highly efficient and effective over the assessment of program skills because of the plasticity of their synaptic transmissions. I would hear about his later though. In having volunteered in this manner, even for credit I would also expect the young folk be conscientious in their work and spontaneous in their performance and willingness to adapt. I would leave them on-guard of their own task management because it is a good exercise for them to self-monitor. The real reward wouldn’t be in the credit earned, but from the insight that usage of the brain can affect cognitive functioning and cognitive functioning can affect the brain (Sternberg, 2003), which will let them be faster on their computer game systems.
The older folk would be chosen for the camp due to having read of the meaningful study and having taken a written assessment based on qualitative thinking. They would have to show exceptionally good judgment and be qualified to share impromptu advice and commentary based on keen awareness, perception, and insight. The older folk would have had similar experiences based on a career line in field psychology work and factual knowledge of the talents of both young folk and participants. They would be able to give clear direction because of their advanced verbal abilities and ability to resolve problems as they crop up. The older folks would be able to break down tasks to be relatively easy for the young people to learn. They would make themselves available to support the emotional and intellectual needs of the young folk and participants.
The older folk hold the key in utilizing available outdoor objects for purposes of the camp and in articulating not only the purpose of the tasks, but also in listening and directing the concerns of the young folks and participants. The older folk would be able to tie together the value of the camp assessments with the detail needed as experimental conditions developed necessary to future programming that was pragmatic and well-balanced. On a daily basis they would be receiving feedback from the tests and other assessments and with great accuracy and persistence they would comb through the data looking for patterns that could be expeditiously challenged by further testing. The information would be shared with the others working on the project after a good dinner and with soft music from a guitar and voice. The younger folk would eat a little more stating that they have to build up their heavier gray matter because their IQ’s were so much obviously bigger than the old folk. The older folk would laugh and continue to gain practical strategies in watching the interactions between the young people and the participants. The older folk might not know exactly the origins of the work, but unconsciously they would know that getting groups of younger folk and targeted participants together would lead to advantageous results. They would have the patience and wisdom to be efficient stewards of the program grant and they would be motivated by the purpose of human self-discovery.
Specific Cognitive and Affective Advantages of Young and Older Folks
Advantages to Both
Brain can affect cognitive functioning and vice versa
Self-monitoring
Plasticity
Each can improve particular level of performance
Advantages to the Younger
Cognitive processing
Sensory and motor cortex
Central nervous system functioning
5% more in brain weight
Fluid intelligence to manipulate abstract symbols
Information processing
Short-term memory and working memory capacity
Attentional resources
IQ
More agile, spontaneous, and coordinated (less storage limitations so less computational time)
Faster upper-level processing (complete and accurate processing of auditory signals
Faster synaptic transmission (speed)
Better memory retrieval
Explicit (conscious) memory
Speed, accuracy and physiological related efficiency of information processing
Advantages to the Older
Crystallized intelligence to store declarative knowledge (semantic-facts. And events plus vocabulary and procedural)
Good Association ability
Excellent reading skills
Higher likelihood of brain remodeling as due set experience and interpretation
More changes in neural connections to compensate cell loss
Higher long-term memory structure and knowledge organization
Effective problem solving
Advanced object and word perception
Better language comprehension
Ability to learn and remember meaningful skills and information
Superior long-term memory and recognition memory
Working difference in high-versus low-complexity tasks
Higher unconscious priming effects and tasks
Stable, even advancement of well-practiced and pragmatic aspect of mental functioning
Reserve capacity in motivation
Knowledge and expertise-based information-processing skills
Practical strategy and knowledge
Accurate – careful and persistent
Qualitative Thinking
Patience and wisdom
Exceptional insight into human development and life matters
Exceptionally good judgment and advice and commentary about difficult life problems
Positive gains in culture-based cognitive pragmatics (meaningful uses of thinking skills)
Reasoning ability
Sagacity (shrewdness)
Learning from ideas and from environment
Judgment
Expeditious use of information
Perspicacity (intensely keen awareness, perception, and insight)
Sternberg, R.J. (2003). Cognitive psychology (3rd ed.). Belmont , CA : Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
End Paper …
Ok, that’s all of it lined up pro-con us older people hehehe Time for washroom, then we’ll have to put it in narrative. Still thinking fairly easy paper. YAYYYY!!!
posted by Ann Marie @ 6/17/2006 03:11:00 PM
Comments: 0
