Age development

Awareness and vocabulary of an elderly person may increase, while psychomotor and sensory-perceptual functions deteriorate. The heterochrony of development is reflected in the existence of several kinds of ages. There is the concept of passport age, which is determined by the number of years lived. Biological age is determined by the degree of maturity of the organism, nervous system, and deterioration of the organism. Social age is determined on the basis of the social roles and functions that a person performs. The psychological age is determined by the nature of the plans, the prospects for the future life; the more unrealized plans a person has, the younger his psychological age.
That is, the psychological age is measured by the internal frame of reference of the individual and depends on the proportion of his psychological past and psychological future.
Very often, a severe illness, disability, changes this internal frame of reference and dramatically increases the psychological age of the individual, increasing the proportion of the psychological past.
In the development of all systems, there is a complex interweaving of involutional and evolutionary processes. The psychological factors of age development, opposing the general process of aging, include the development of speech-thinker functions and sensitization of functions in the process of labor activity. Regarding the first of these factors, Ananiev wrote that the most important acquisitions of the historical nature of man become the decisive factor in his ontogenetic evolution. It was shown that people who continue their education in adulthood and are engaged in mental activity are characterized by a higher level of preservation of psycho-physiological, sensorimotor, intellectual functions throughout the entire range of adulthood.
Moreover, in the process of developing an adult, learning is increasing. As for the second factor of development, namely, sensitization of functions in the process of labor activity, it should be noted that in the development of mental functions there are 2 phases. Phase 1 is characterized by a general frontal progress of functions (in youth, youth, early middle age), determined by their maturation. In the second phase, the evolution of functions is accompanied by their specialization in relation to certain activities. This second peak of functional development is reached at later periods of maturity. If in the first phase of development the functional mechanism acts as the main mechanism, then in the second phase the operational mechanisms act as the main mechanisms, and the duration of this phase is determined by the degree of human activity as a subject of activity. So, for example, it was shown that in persons of the driving professions visual acuity, field of view, and an eye viewer remained intact up to the retirement age due to their involvement in professional activities.
As the personality grows, the integrity and integrity of its mental organization grows, the interrelation of various properties and characteristics increases, new development potentials accumulate. There is an expansion and deepening of the ties of the individual with the outside world, society and other people. A special role is played by those aspects of the psyche that ensure the internal activity of the individual, manifested in its interests, an emotional, conscious attitude to the environment and to one’s own activity.
One of the trends of development is the generalization of the relationship of the individual: in the process of its formation in the course of ontogenesis of the integral individuality, there is a gradual elimination of discrepancies between the properties of different levels, a person becomes more solid, integrated. It can be said that individuality, as a product of development, having formed itself becomes an objective factor in the further course of life and development.