Thematic engagements: Affects and learning in older age

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a sociocultural perspective to consider affects in older age. The psychology of learning throughout the whole life course, including in the life of older adults, suggest that affects play an important role. However, developmental psychology has paid little attention to affects in learning and development, and even less to these aspects in older age. We believe that it is important to examine affects in older age because of their centrality in the lifecourse; but how to account for them? We propose the notion of thematic engagement to highlight the role of affects in older persons' learning and development, and to designate transversal and pluri-thematic interests across activities and domains of knowledge, which enable us to show that some topics, domains or interests become more important than others for a given person across time. We base our claims on a longitudinal study of older people engaging in different activities at home, in their neighbourhood, as well as in a daycare centre for older people, and provide three dialogical exemplars. We finally highlight some theoretical and empirical implications of our proposition.