| A | B |
|---|
| ageism | A form of prejudice in which people are categorized and judged solely on the basis of their chronological age. |
| elderspeak | A condescending way of speaking to older adults that resembles baby talk, with simple and short sentences, exaggerated emphasis, repetition, and a slower rate and a higher pitch than normal speech. |
| young-old | Healthy, vigorous, financially secure older adults (generally, those aged 60 to 75) who are well initegrated into the lives of their families and communities. |
| old-old | Older adults (generally, those aged 75 to 85) who suffer from physical, mental, or social deficits. |
| oldest-old | Elderly adults (generally, those over age 85) who are dependent on others for almost everything, requiring supportive services such as nursing-home care and hospital stays. |
| population pyramid | A graphic representation of population as a series of stacked bars in which each age cohort is represented by one bar, with the youngest cohort at the bottom. |
| dependency ratio | A calculation of the number of self-sufficient, productive adults compared with the number of dependents (children and the elderly) in a given population. |
| compression of morbidity | A shortening of the time a person spends ill or infirm before death; accomplished by postponing illness. |
| primary aging | The universal and irreversible physical changes that occur to all living creatures as they grow older. |
| secondary aging | The specific physical illnesses or conditions that become more common with aging but result from poor health habits, genetic vulnerability, and other influences that vary from person to person. |
| cardiovascular disease (CVD) | Illness that involves the heart and the circulatory system. |
| maximum life span | The oldest possble age to which members of a species can live, under ideal circumstances. |
| average life expectancy | The number of years that the average person in a particular population is likely to live. |
| centerarian | A person who has lived 100 years or more. |
| calorie restriction | The practice of limiting dietary energy intake, while still consuming sufficient quantities of vitamins, minerals, and other important nutrients, for the purpose of improving health and slowing down the aging process. |
| ecological validity | The idea that memory should be measured as people actually experience it, not as laboratory tests assess it. |
| control processes | The part of the information-processing system that consists of methods for regulating the analysis and flow of information. |
| dementia | Irreversible loss of intelectual functioning caused by organic brain damage or disease. |
| Alzheimer disease (AD) | The most common cause of dementia, characterized by gradual deterioration of memory and personality and marked by the formation of plaques of beta-amyloid protein and tangles of tau protein in the brain. |
| vascular dementia (VaD) | A form of dementia characterized by sporadic, and progressive, loss of intellectual functioning caused by repeated infarcts, or temporary obstructions of blood vessels, which prevent sufficient blood from reaching the brain. |
| frontal lobe dementia | A form of dementia characterized by personality changes caused by deterioration of the frontal lobes and the amygdala. |
| self-actualization | The final stage in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, characterized by aesthetic, creative, philosophical, and spiritual understanding. |
| life review | An examination of one's own part in life, which often takes the form of stories written or spoken by elderly people who want to share them with younger ones. |
