Biological Measures of Human Experience Across the Lifespan : Making Visible the Invisible

The proposed volume explores methods used by social scientists and human biologists to understand fundamental aspects of human experience. It is organized by stages of the human lifespan: beginnings, adulthood, and aging. Explored are particular kinds of experiences - including pain, stress, activity levels, sleep quality, memory, and menopausal hot flashes - that have traditionally relied upon self-reports, but are subject to inter-individual differences in self-awareness or culture-based expectations. The volume also examines other ways in which normally "invisible" phenomena can be made visible, such as the caloric content of foods, blood pressure, fecundity, growth, nutritional status, genotypes, and bone health. All of the chapters in this book address the means by which social scientists and human biologists measure subjective and objective experience.-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-xi Making Visible the Invisible....Pages 1-10 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 Calibrating the Next Generation: Mothers, Early Life Experiences, and Reproductive Development....Pages 13-27 Baby-Lag: Methods for Assessing Parental Tiredness and Fatigue....Pages 29-46 The Lived Experience of Growing....Pages 47-66 Physical Activity and Inactivity Among Children and Adolescents: Assessment, Trends, and Correlates....Pages 67-101 Front Matter....Pages 103-103 The Challenge of Measuring Pain in Humans....Pages 105-115 Stress Biomarkers as an Objective Window on Experience....Pages 117-141 Continuous Blood Pressure Variation: Hidden Adaptability....Pages 143-169 Biomarkers of Diet and Nutritional Health....Pages 171-193 Objective and Subjective Aspects of the Drive to Eat in Obesogenic Environments....Pages 195-230 Front Matter....Pages 231-231 Hot Flashes: Phenomenology and Measurement....Pages 233-254 Bone Health in Midlife Women....Pages 255-273 Subjective Memory Complaints and Objective Memory Performance....Pages 275-299 Front Matter....Pages 301-301 Subjective and Objective Knowledge: Persistent Puzzles....Pages 303-309 The Shrinking Black Box of Human Biology....Pages 311-326 Back Matter....Pages 327-336 This volume explores methods used by social scientists and human biologists to understand fundamental aspects of human experience. It is organized by stages of the human lifespan: beginnings, adulthood, and aging. Explored are particular kinds of experiences - including pain, stress, activity levels, sleep quality, memory, and menopausal hot flashes - that have traditionally relied upon self-reports, but are subject to inter-individual differences in self-awareness or culture-based expectations. The volume also examines other ways in which normally “invisible” phenomena can be made visible, such as the caloric content of foods, blood pressure, fecundity, growth, nutritional status, genotypes, and bone health. All of the chapters in this book address the means by which social scientists and human biologists measure subjective and objective experience.