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Age and Awareness of Finitude in Developmental Gerontology

1975; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 6; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2190/00yy-3th7-fub4-jhw9

1541-3764

Victor W. Marshall,

Aging and Gerontology Research

In developmental theory, awareness of finitude is held to initiate processes of disengagement, self-focusing, and life-review. Age has been assumed to be inversely related to awareness of finitude, and employed in testing these conceptions. Rather then being a simple inverse function of age, awareness of finitude is an estimate based on social-comparison processes. These data demonstrate the weaknesses inherent in any attempt to substitute age as a measure of awareness of finitude. Selected aspects of reminiscence are examined in relation to awareness of finitude in illustration of the fruitfulness of a direct use of awareness of finitude as a variable in relation to developmental aspects of aging.