Dynamics of Adaptation in Very Old Age: Within-Person and Across-Partner Processes in the Daily Lives of Couples

考虑到老年人口的快速增长，了解老年人如何适应日常生活挑战是关键。根据发展语境主义（Bronfenbrenner, 1979）的概念，我们将解决以下三组问题。首先，考虑到高龄是一种（内生的）环境，构成了适应能力的极限测试情况，我们提出，高龄时无处不在的身体和精神衰退允许精确定位各种个人层面的动态特征和过程（例如，情绪可变性，压力反应性，情绪调节等），这些特征和过程支持或阻碍了个人的日常功能。因此，我们将收集和研究高龄人士的数据。其次，考虑到老年人配偶的微观系统作为一个（外生）背景，为日常功能提供支持和约束，我们提出近端环境因素，如双元水平过程（如情绪感染、任务协作），作为克服挑战的社会资源或风险因素。因此，我们将研究和收集高龄配偶的数据。第三，考虑到个人和配偶的日常生活环境嵌入到成年期更广泛的发展中，我们预计内源性和外源性适应过程的配置已经由先前的个体发育形成，并将影响未来的个体发育。为了分析日常生活过程，我们将收集动态评估的微观纵向数据。为了检查与个体发育的联系，我们将把该项目纳入正在进行的宏观纵向研究，即德国经济研究所的德国社会经济小组研究（SOEP）。总的来说，这些见解有助于我们理解为什么有些人比其他人更成功地衰老，并为设计干预措施提供基础，以支持老年人优化其最后发展阶段的能力。

Understanding how very old individuals adapt to daily life challenges is key given the rapid growth of this segment of the population. Drawing on notions from developmental contextualism (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), we will address the following three sets of questions. First, considering very old age to be an (endogenous) context that constitutes a testing-the-limits situation for adaptive capacities, we propose that the omnipresent physical and mental decrements in very old age allow pinpointing of a variety of individual-level dynamic characteristics and processes (e.g., emotion variability, stress reactivity, emotion regulation, etc.) that support or hinder individuals in their day-to-day functioning. Hence, we will collect and study data from very old persons. Second, considering the micro-system of spouse of older adults as an (exogenous) context that provides affordances and constraints on daily functioning, we propose that proximal environmental factors such as dyad-level processes (e.g., emotional contagion, task collaboration) serve as social resource or risk factors for overcoming challenges. We will thus study and collect data from very old spouses. Third, considering that individual and spousal daily-life contexts are embedded in the broader development in adulthood, we expect that configurations of endogenous and exogenous adaptation processes have been shaped by prior ontogenetic development and will influence future ontogenetic development. To analyze daily-life processes, we will collect ambulatory-assessment micro-longitudinal data. To examine linkages to ontogenetic development, we will integrate the project into an ongoing macro-longitudinal study, namely the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, SOEP, that is located at the German Institute for Economic Research, DIW. Collectively, the insights gained promise to inform our understanding of why some individuals age more successfully than others and to provide a foundation for designing interventions that support the ability of older adults to optimize their final stages of development.