Language, Memory, and Aging
Language, Memory, and Aging

Author: Leah L. Light

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-07-30

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780521448765

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From a cognitive standpoint, the authors consider the role of awareness in memory and language.

Cognition, Language and Aging
Cognition, Language and Aging

Author: Heather Harris Wright

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2016-03-16

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 9027267316

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Age-related changes in cognitive and language functions have been extensively researched over the past half-century. The older adult represents a unique population for studying cognition and language because of the many challenges that are presented with investigating this population, including individual differences in education, life experiences, health issues, social identity, as well as gender. The purpose of this book is to provide an advanced text that considers these unique challenges and assembles in one source current information regarding (a) language in the aging population and (b) current theories accounting for age-related changes in language function. A thoughtful and comprehensive review of current research spanning different disciplines that study aging will achieve this purpose. Such disciplines include linguistics, psychology, sociolinguistics, neurosciences, cognitive sciences, and communication sciences. As of January 2019, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.

Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults
Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2020-05-14

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0309671035

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Social isolation and loneliness are serious yet underappreciated public health risks that affect a significant portion of the older adult population. Approximately one-quarter of community-dwelling Americans aged 65 and older are considered to be socially isolated, and a significant proportion of adults in the United States report feeling lonely. People who are 50 years of age or older are more likely to experience many of the risk factors that can cause or exacerbate social isolation or loneliness, such as living alone, the loss of family or friends, chronic illness, and sensory impairments. Over a life course, social isolation and loneliness may be episodic or chronic, depending upon an individual's circumstances and perceptions. A substantial body of evidence demonstrates that social isolation presents a major risk for premature mortality, comparable to other risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, or obesity. As older adults are particularly high-volume and high-frequency users of the health care system, there is an opportunity for health care professionals to identify, prevent, and mitigate the adverse health impacts of social isolation and loneliness in older adults. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults summarizes the evidence base and explores how social isolation and loneliness affect health and quality of life in adults aged 50 and older, particularly among low income, underserved, and vulnerable populations. This report makes recommendations specifically for clinical settings of health care to identify those who suffer the resultant negative health impacts of social isolation and loneliness and target interventions to improve their social conditions. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults considers clinical tools and methodologies, better education and training for the health care workforce, and dissemination and implementation that will be important for translating research into practice, especially as the evidence base for effective interventions continues to flourish.

Constraints on Language: Aging, Grammar, and Memory
Constraints on Language: Aging, Grammar, and Memory

Author: Susan Kemper

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2007-05-08

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 0306469022

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Susan Kemper A debate about the role of working memory in language processing has become center-most in psycholinguistics (Caplan & Waters, in press; Just & Carpenter, 1992; Just, Carpenter, & Keller, 1996; Waters & Caplan, 1996). This debate concerns which aspects of language processing are vulnerable to working memory limitations, how working memory is best measured, and whether compensatory processes can offset working memory limitations. Age-comparative studies are particularly relevant to this debate for several reasons: difficulties with language and communication are frequently mentioned by older adults and signal the onset of Alzheimer's dementia and other pathologies associated with age; older adults commonly experience working memory limitations that affect their ability to perform everyday activities; the rapid aging of the United States population has forced psychologists and gerontologists to examine the effects of aging on cognition, drawing many investigators to the study of cognitive aging. Older adults constitute ideal population for studying how working memory limitations affect cognitive performance, particularly language and communication. Age-comparative studies of cognitive processes have advanced our understanding of the temporal dynamics of cognition as well as the working memory demands of many types of tasks (Kliegl, Mayr, & Krampe, 1994; Mayr & Kliegl, 1993). The research findings reviewed in this volume have clear implications - for addressing the practical problems of older adults as consumers of leisure ti- reading, radio and television broadcasts, as targets of medical, legal, and financial documents, and as participants in a web of service agencies and volunteer activities.

The Effects of Alzheimer's Disease on Language
The Effects of Alzheimer's Disease on Language

Author: Jenny Beyen

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2010-03-31

Total Pages: 19

ISBN-13: 3640581717

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Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: 3,0, RWTH Aachen University, language: English, abstract: Alzheimer's Disease (henceforth „A.D.“) is generally diagnosed in people over the age of 65. So when the world populations becomes older and more persons over the age of 65 populate the world, the disease spreads. By 2006, the number of A.D.-patients had already increased to 26.6 millions. This number is assumed to quadruple by 2050. But an improved A.D.-research would not only help those persons who suffer from it: „Alzheimer's Disease offers the challenge not only of delineating the writing disturbance of a common neurodegenerative illness but also the opportunity to discern how widespread neocortical deafferentation affects the neurobehavioral underpinnings of a complex cognitive task such as writing.“ (Glossar et al., 2000:78) Why especially the examination of language in A.D.-patients can promote the general study of language a great deal is also pointed out by Obler et al. (1999:92): „The language of dementing patients presents a unique opportunity for examining the relationship between language and cognition. The pattern of dissociation of abilities in dementia can yield information regarding the normal relationship – dependence or independence – between language and more general cognitive abilities. [...] To study language production and comprehension abilities in dementing patients is to explore the boundaries between syntax and semantics and among semantics, real world knowledge, and reasoning abilites.“ In this termpaper I will show that A.D. has severe effects on the patients’ language and that it is primarily caused by an impaired memory. During the second chapter, I will give a brief overview of the disease in general, i.e. the history of A.D., the insights and damages of A.D.-patients’ brain and body, and the different stages of this disease. Chapter 3 will present a selection of the most common effects of A.D. on language. The fourth chapter will close with a short summary of the termpaper and a conclusion.

Dementia and Memory
Dementia and Memory

Author: Lars-Göran Nilsson

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2013-11-20

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1317916581

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A negative effect of the ageing population is that more individuals are experiencing cognitive decline and some form of neurodegenerative disease. With the number of people experiencing dementia likely to double in the next 20 years, this change in society presents one of greatest challenges facing public health personnel in the 21st century. The aim of this volume is to describe research that is in progress, and the major findings that have been obtained in the scientific study of dementia. The chapters in the first section of the book focus upon early signs of dementia, and consider several approaches to finding early cognitive signs and biological markers of dementia. The second section considers whether dementia is inevitable for people who become very old, and features chapters on risk factors and proactive influences, cognitive reserve and intervention. Each chapter in the final section describes phenomena which are related to differences in function between memory systems, including anterograde memory in fronto-temporal dementia, and the role semantic memory and semantic cognition may play in developing an understanding of the development of the degenerative processes in dementia. With contributions from world-class researchers in this area, the volume offers a concise overview of key findings in recent research on dementia and memory. It will be of great interest to researchers and advanced students of cognitive psychology, and to those working in related fields, such as gerontology, rehabilitation sciences, and allied health.

Dementia of the Alzheimer type. Language of the elderly
Dementia of the Alzheimer type. Language of the elderly

Author: Sebastian Putzier

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2016-06-22

Total Pages: 29

ISBN-13: 3668244537

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Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,3, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Institut für Anglistik/ Amerikanistik), course: Language, Mind and Brain, language: English, abstract: What is to be examined in this paper is the overview of the current research status about language pathology in Alzheimer’s disease. The errors of the language system, visible in the lexicon, semantics, lexical semantics, syntax, etc. in reading, writing and spelling of concerned people will be examined. Furthermore, the neuropathological view on the Alzheimer brain will be explained. In between the last fifteen years, dementia has become one of the main causes of death in industrialized countries. Each year from 1996 to 2006 more than 50-60 percent of the elderly in Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain and the United States of America died of a sort of dementia. Researchers examine disease patterns of dementia and claim coherence between the lifespan of people and the outbreak of dementia diseases. Of course, statistics point out that over the last hundred years the expectancy of life of newborns rose in Germany from 44.8 percent for boys and 48.3 percent for girls in 1901 up to 74.4 percent for boys and 80.5 percent for girls in 1998. Also the lifespan of people aged 60 years and older has risen from 13.1 (males) and 14.2 (females) percent up to 18.9 (males) and 23.2 (females) percent in 1998. Neuropathologists have been working for more than fifty years to examine and catalogue each variety of the dementia diseases, which becomes more and more difficult as specialized braincast equipments and specific knowledge are updated steadily. Since 1994 the 21st September is declared World Alzheimer's DayTM. At this special day of the year, Alzheimer associations prepare information materials and concentrate all their efforts on raising attention about dementia in the eyes of governments, society, medical professionals and people with dementia, their relatives and caregivers.