NDSU Linked Lives Research Lab
Graduate students share research on healthy aging
Published January 16, 2015
People are living longer and want to know how to live better.
A group of four NDSU graduate students recently took the latest research on healthy aging to residents at Bethany Retirement Living in Fargo. The students created a one-hour, interactive program to reinforce healthy habits and introduce new ways to remain mentally and physically fit.
Developmental science students Courage Mudzongo, Meagan Jones and Zhen Yang, and communications student Whitney Anderson used their knowledge of the Theory of Successful Aging to design the program. The theory highlights behaviors and adaptations that can maintain health as people age.
Heather Fuller-Iglesias, assistant professor of human development and family science, said the program was important because it contradicts the more passive prevailing model that focuses on treating illnesses later in life. The students highlighted research that promotes active ways to live a happy, healthy life.
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Published January 2015
The Importance of Recognizing the Role of Social Support in Human Development Across the Lifespan
As a developmental psychologist, I am frequently asked questions about parenting young children such as “How should I handle my daughter’s tantrums?” or “How do I get my son to eat his vegetables?”. While these questions related to raising young children are clearly important (especially for those of us in the trenches with young children!), in recent decades researchers in the field of human development have come to realize that the important questions of human development extend far beyond childhood and into the entire lifespan. In fact, we now highlight the importance of understanding growth and changes in human development starting in the prenatal period and lasting through the process of dying at the end of life; thus, as humans our development occurs from “womb to tomb”. Moreover, though our first (and arguably the most influential) intimate relationship is the parent-child relationship, it has become quite salient that human development is influenced by a variety of interpersonal relationships that change over our lifespan. The significance of interpersonal connections for development and well-being across the lifespan is the focus of my research as director of the Linked Lives Research Laboratory at NDSU.....