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Taking your child to the doctor for yearly checkup is something that everyone is familiar

with. Checking the growth of children at every visit and tracking how they are growing is

important information and is a predictor of what they maybe in the future. The article on "On

new Measurements of Aging" was based on the questions and answers dealing with study

findings, of a professor of social and behavioral sciences, at Stony Brook University named,

Warren Sanderson. He had compared the question of “what if”, there were standard measures of

aging, as there were of growth in children. His recent study that he conducted was on the adult

handgrip. He wanted to show if there was a correlation between varying levels of education and

the different rates of aging in people.

Warren Sanderson discussed the conventional definition of old age and how that has

changed over the years. People have always known the beginning of older age starts at the age of

65 years old. The life expectancy has also changed over the decades because of the difference in

our health system. Life expectancy also has changed in the way that people view it due to the

distorted view of aging and public policies related to aging.

When people are near the end of their life, they should be considering entering their onset

of ageing and entering old age. Every person according to Warren Sanderson, tends to differ

when it comes to onset of older age. When a person has less than 15 years of their life left to live,

than we can consider them to be old. He gave two example of people’s life expectancy; the first

one had five years remaining to live, and the other had 25 years remaining to live. When talking

about old age, he would say, the first one is still far from the end of life, and the second one is

near the end of life. When looking at what older age is classified in the United Stated, men who

are at the age 69.2 years old and women who are at the age 72.3 years old.

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There are many different characteristics that people may look for when evaluating

whether a person is aging. The many different ways of telling whether a person is aging. This

can range from how many birthdays someone has had, or the level of function that they are at.

Warren Sanderson study’s a unique way for ageing, the hand grip strength and measuring of the

upper body strength.

There was comparable data on 50,000 people from the United States, Japan, China,

European countries, and South Korea that suggested that the hand grip strength is a reliable

predictor of aging. The hand grip strength can be a good indicator on whether a person is sick or

determine their mortality and morbidity rate.

The study that Warren Sanderson had published showed the differences in the United

States life expectancy in people that had different levels of education. The men and women that

were in his study either, graduated from high school, never graduated, and those who higher

education. He then compared these people to their hand grip strength. The findings were that

white women, low education; 65 years old had the same hand grip as that with the white women,

who had more education, that were 69.5 years old. The only difference with the two women was

that the women had low education had an age disadvantage of about 4.5 years. Another test

done was of a white man, 65 years old, with a 4.6 years age difference. An African American

woman was tested that had higher education, and had a 3.5 years age advantage. For the African

American men there was no age difference. All of this is confessing and is something that they

want to continue to study and find out more information on.

Warren Sanderson’s findings may be the new way to measure aging. When people go

visit the doctor, they can take down their measurements, keep track of them, and monitor if there

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is anything going wrong with a person. Taking measurement of handgrips strength is very cheap

and simple and maybe one day there will be standard age related tables that do the same as

height and weight tables they have for children’s progress in the doctor’s office.

Many of us think of the elderly and what they have learned throughout their lifetime as,

“word of the wise”. We look up to our elders in hopes that they may know the answers that we

may not always have. People learn and see many different things throughout a lifetime. As

people get older, many things can change including wisdom, creativity, creativity in late life, and

implications for the future.

Wisdom is acquired throughout one’s lifetime. People are just not born with wisdom,

they acquire it through life’s refection’s and personal experiences. So that being said, the older

the adult, the more wisdom one would think that they would have. Wisdom also is learned

through one’s introspection, intuition, and empathy. Most all of these have been through the

interactions with other people throughout their lifetime. People’s environment also plays an

important role in one’s wisdom. Wisdom is the cognitive development, and the knowledge that

the person has acquired with age.

There is five different criteria’s used to see if a person demonstrated wise behavior.

Based on the research that was done for this study, the findings showed that younger people do

have some of these skills, but would require more maturity. The older adults in this study were

the ones that were the wise out of the group. The first of the five criteria’s that demonstrate if a

person has wise behavior is based on their factual knowledge. Factual knowledge would be what

the person actual knows about relevant issues and about life conditions. The person has to

demonstrate how they would process general and specific information. Another criteria is

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procedural knowledge. This criterion involves interpretation of life experiences to a given

situation using decision making, planning, and coming up with different strategies. Life span

contextualism is another criterion that is used to assess if an individual is able to demonstrate

wise behavior. This criterion considers the contest of events and relationships that are among

them as part of this. Another area that is considered criteria is value relativism. In the value

relativism a person’s owns values and priorities that are brought in to situations, and how that

person handles those situations, respecting there values and priorities is taken into consideration.

Lastly, managing uncertainty’s is the last criteria for assess if an individual demonstrate wide

behavior. In managing uncertainty the strategies and backup plans that people will come up with,

and how they will perform them if they are hampered by external factors in the future.

People have the opportunity for the growth in wisdom and creativity which can also

developed wisdom. This can happen regardless of what class someone is from, or educational

level, and wisdom can continued to grow. Achieving wisdom goes beyond the limits of peoples

basic needs, such as income, health, and housing. That being said, it may not be limited to those

with social and economic resources. For a wise person to be better at dealing with conflict

resolution, this person does not act impulsively, they have good insights, and they are able to

reflect on anything that is given to them, in any situation objectively. Not everybody is able to

achieve wisdom, it is the way that people are able to interpret the knowledge in a deeper way

than they already know and in a more profound way. By older adults be able to do this with their

knowledge it may be able to give them more power to take charge in their lives if they need to,

they will become more accepting of their own personal weaknesses and of others weaknesses..

There was a study done called Berkeley Guidance Study that reflected on cognitive, affective,

reflective thinking in older men and women that score high in these areas also showed high

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levels of life satisfaction. All of this being said, the more active someone is in their aging, the

more wisdom they will obtain, the more satisfied they may be with their lives.

Other cultures value wisdom with age. In other cultures they see that the older person as

the “wise elder”. The older the person, the more respect they will receive. People think that the

older the person is the more years of experience, the more wisdom they will have. One

perspective that other cultures on wisdom are that it requires lifelong insights, experiences, and

emotional maturity to have an impact on their younger generation. The way that this influences

the younger generation is on their family skills, community traditions, and cultural values. This

perspective along with the focus on emotional maturity, regulation of one’s feeling is considered

the Eastern concept of wisdom. Along with this concept they tend to emphasis on cognitive

maturity. There are two different ways that they look at wisdom, by the balance theory and

developmental intelligence that that manifest from wisdom. First the balance theory suggests that

the person is able to balance different components of intelligence. The balance theory uses

analytical, practical, and creative intelligence components to solve problems that will benefit

society. The person is using these components towards the society rather than for one’s personal

gain. The other way to look at wisdom is by development intelligence that manifests in wisdom.

This is when the person uses their positive emotions and becomes better integrated with age. All

of this includes wisdom within cognition, life experiences, social events, and one’s spirituality.

As people get older, they may gain more creativity in their life. Creativity is the ability

for something new to come into one’s life that is valued. This may be someone’s original idea or

a material product that they have thought of. This is said to happen because of the changes that

are happening in the aging brain. When people think of creativity, it can be in many areas such as

science, arts, and technology. This can be broken down into smaller categories for example,

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crafts, cooking, or gardening. Sometime it can be hard to point out if, or in what a person is

creative. Some well-known people have been known for their extremes in their creativeness.

Albert Einstein and his creativeness in science or Thomas Edison in technology are some popular

people in history that are recognized for their creativity.

Dr. Gene Cohen examines Creativity in late life by publishing a book called, The

Creative Age. In his book he talked about many different older adults that were very creative

artists, writers, scientists, and composers. Some of the work that was talked about included; the

father of calculus, at age 71, Sir Isaac Newton revised a book describing the three laws of

motion, and then at age 84 did it again. Another, Carl Frieddrich Gauss, at the age 71 he was a

German mathematician he had made many discoveries. Titian, a Renaissance painter, painted

many of his masterpieces between the age 78 and 83. The three leaders of the women’s

movement in 1875 were in their late adult hood.

Even to this day, there is no way to truly be considered creative. All of the research and

studies that have been done are just based off the analyses of the product and not their creative

processes directly, making it hard to truly understand who is creative. A test that was developed

to measure the amount of creativity that someone had called divergent thinking. The divergent

thinking test was a structured model of intelligence that was designed by Guilford in 1967. This

test was done by asking the participants many unfamiliar mental tasks. The example that was

given was to name the many different uses for flowers. Another test was developed in 1988 by

Torrance testing one’s creativity. This was also a way of using the measures of divergent

thinking. Children were given this test and when they score high on it they were found to be

creative. The children that scored high on the on test were comparable to young adults.

Researchers have found that the quantity of creative outputs by poets, artists, and scientists at the

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average rate of output at age 70 to 80 and it drops to half of that. The most productivity occurs

when the person is in their 60’s, but this is after they have had their first peek of production.

Some of the research suggested that creativity increase with age. With age, people become more

confident with themselves and their work. They have more experience, social constraints, and

psychological growth. The psychological discovered that the people have given them the ability

to make novel decisions and to solve problems better than they would have before. The lifetime

of learning and experiences has helped them with the development within the brain and are

allowing the synapses to accrue faster.

What does the future hold for creativeness in ageing? There are always an advance going

on in neuroscience that uncovers changes and will uncover more changes in the future. The age

related changes that are being looked at include change in memory, attention, and learning

ability. There is technology that is used to be used when studying the brain. One of them is the

fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging. The fMRI is used to detect which part of the

brain is activated when a specific stimuli is present and under different learning areas. The other

techniques that are used for brain research is the PET, positron emission tomography. The PET is

used to determine what part of the brain is being used when memory, attention, and learning are

being studied. The PET scans brain activity differences among people that have different

education and the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The downfall to these scans is the high

cost and that most insurance will not cover them.

Creativities are important for older adults to be encouraged to keep up with in their life.

When older adults have the opportunities for creative expressions they need to take the chance to

do them. This has a big impact on the physical and emotional wellbeing of the older adult. There

was a study done with older adults that had 35 weeks of arts education, and for those older adults

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that completed the study were assessed one year later, they had fewer doctor visits, fewer

medications, scored lower on depression testing, and had a higher morale.

Always remember that the “word of the wise” may come from the older adults, from all

that they have learned throughout their lifetime. We look up to our elders in hopes that they may

know the answers that we may not always have. People learn and see many different things

throughout a lifespan. As people get older many things change, including wisdom, and creative.