(2) Psychological characteristics of the elderly The psychological characteristics of the elderly include cognitive characteristics, emotional characteristics, behavioral characteristics and personality characteristics. Psychological state reflects and affects people's physiological state. Many senile diseases are not only pathological changes of organs and tissues, but also related to psychological factors and long-term tension and anxiety, such as hypertension and gastric ulcer in the elderly. In addition, the psychological factors of the elderly have a great influence on the aging process, health and longevity, and the treatment of diseases.
(3) Cognition and cognitive function cognition includes feeling, perception, memory, thinking and attention. Cognitive function refers to all kinds of conscious psychological activities that exist all the time when people are awake, including simple determination, perception, understanding and judgment of themselves and the environment to the completion of complex mathematical calculations.
Cognition includes four functions: ① receiving function, that is, receiving external information through various senses; ② Memory and learning functions, that is, memory, preservation, copying and recognition; (3) Thinking function, that is, presenting the information of instant memory and long-term memory, and then combining them to find the relationship between them; (4) Expression function, which is expressed through behaviors such as eyes, limbs or emotions. Cognitive functions include memory, calculation, orientation of time and space, structural ability and execution ability (including planning, starting, sequence, operation, feedback, abstraction, decision-making and judgment, etc.). ), language understanding, expression and application. The cognitive impairment of the elderly includes sensory perception (such as vision and hearing), memory ability (especially recent memory), thinking judgment and problem-solving ability. The decline of intelligence is mainly the obvious decline of fluid (or fluid) intelligence.
(4) The performance of the sense of old age 1. Vision and hearing: the function of audio-visual organs declines with age, and the decline of hearing is more obvious than that of vision. Generally, high-frequency hearing loss is more. Due to the decline of audio-visual function, the activities of the elderly are limited, communication is reduced, and they are gradually confined to the small world of the family, which is prone to adverse psychological reactions such as loneliness, anxiety and depression. When the audio-visual function is seriously reduced, it is easy to produce negative psychology, leading to personality doubt and even paranoia.
2. Taste and smell: because taste buds decrease with age, the taste buds of the elderly over 75 years old are less than those of the young over 30 years old 1/3, so the taste is dull; The atrophy of olfactory mucosa leads to the decline of olfactory function, which is easy to anorexia. Therefore, we should pay attention to the color, aroma and taste of the diet of the elderly and make appropriate adjustments.
3, skin feeling: including touch, cold and hot feeling and pain, have declined, so it is easy to bump and burn. Because of the improvement of pain threshold, the diagnosis and treatment of diseases are often delayed.
4, sense of balance: significantly reduced, prone to accidental injuries such as falls.
(V) Characteristics of memory impairment in the elderly Memory is the reflection of past events in the human brain, that is, the process of recalling past experiences. Old people have a good memory of what they just saw or heard and the impression they left in their minds at that time, but their ability to transform content into lasting and stored information is poor.
When what you have learned appears in front of you again, you need to recognize it. If the stimulus is not in front of you, you need to reproduce it as a memory. The elderly have better recognition ability, but poor recall ability. If friends I haven't seen for a long time meet unexpectedly, they are very familiar with each other's faces, but they just can't remember each other's names. Old people have poor mechanical memory ability, and better memory of logical and meaningful content, especially some important things related to work and life.
(VI) Performance of thinking disorders in the elderly Generally speaking, thinking aging appears late, and the thinking ability related to one's familiar major can still be maintained in old age. However, the ability of concept learning, logical reasoning and problem solving of the elderly has also declined, especially the agility, flexibility, fluency and flexibility of thinking.
(VII) Learning ability and adaptability of the elderly Due to the aging of the organ system, the ability of the elderly to learn new knowledge and get in touch with new things has declined compared with when they were young, and their social adaptability has also declined. It is worth mentioning that the elderly generally lack flexibility, which affects their operational ability and often fails to make accurate judgments on things.
Due to memory loss, slow response, slow speed of speaking, reading and writing, and reduced fluency of words. I often speak clumsily, and I can't say it on my lips. It's hard to find words or forget them when I speak or write. Language fluency is a manifestation of language ability, which is obviously affected with the growth of age and can be used as an indicator of aging.
(VIII) Emotional changes of the elderly The emotional experience of the elderly is often characterized by enhancement and instability. Easy to get excited, excited, easy to quarrel with others, easy to worry and worry when things happen. Once you have a strong emotional experience, it is not easy to calm down quickly. Sometimes the loneliness, depression and lack of interest of the elderly will be misdiagnosed as dementia.
(9) Personality changes of the elderly The so-called personality is the sum of psychological characteristics such as temperament, ability, interests, hobbies and habits initially formed with personality as the core, including innate quality and acquired family, education and social environment. The personality changes of the elderly are mostly subjective, sensitive, suspicious and stubborn, but also paranoid, lonely and indifferent.
(10) Changes in the reaction and action of the elderly Due to the decline in comprehensive judgment ability, the elderly are often slow to respond to stimuli, slow to act, and have poor quick response ability, so they are prone to various accidents.