Language & Cognitive Aging

Language & Cognitive Aging

1. COGNITIVE AGEING

   • Cognitive ageing is the decline in cognitive processing that occurs as people get older. Age-related impairments in reasoning, memory and processing speed can arise during adulthood and progress into the elder years.
     • Cognitive slowing - cognitive operations are executed too slowly, there is a decay of prior information. Memory decay before the chance to execute
       • Memory - Declines in general, action and sentence memory
   • There are a number of theories, but none are complete accounts for cognitive ageing

2. LANGUAGE & AGEING

   • Ability to communicate is one of the last things to disappear and shows little decline as we get older. As we get older, use of language becomes more sophisticated. Perception of language remains largely unaffected. The production of language, however, shows signs of deficits with age. There is an increased prevalence of tip of the tongue moments (not being bale to find the right word)

3. INHIBITION DEFICIT HYPOTHESIS (IDH)

   • ZACKS & HASHER (1988)
     • The inhibitory deficit hypothesis, or inhibitory theory, is an attention‐based, general model of cognition that accounts for age differences in cognitive functioning
       • Posits that efficient inhibitory processes enable goals to regulate thought and action by suppressing otherwise automatic activation of goal‐irrelevant information. Deficits in inhibitory regulation result in heightened distractibility e.g. changes in font reduce reading speed. Retrieval of irrelevant words and meanings, failure to inhibit when activated (language perception). Activation of irrelevant sounds and words, failure to recover from irrelevant activations (language production)

4. NODE STRUCTURE THEORY (NST)

   • MACKAY (1987)
     • Provides a general account of the perception and production of language and other cognitive skills
       • The language system and the semantic system are connected by lexical nodes. The semantic representations are highly interwoven to other sub concepts e.g. 'Pylon' - steel, tall, wires, electricity etc.

5. TRANSFER DEFICIT HYPOTHESIS

   • MACKAY & BURKE (1990)
     • Argues that there are varying strengths of connection. The more a frequently and recently a connection is used, the stronger it is. The stronger the connection, the easier it is to be activated and vice versa. The more we use the connections and the more recently they have been used, the easier they are to activate. They get weaker over time with aging and get weaker the less they are used - this is why we see an asymmetric difference, it affects production not perception
       • In language production, there is a huge redundancy. You cannot produce a word if there is a single phonological node missing. If any of the phonological nodes are impaired or have decayed, the whole system goes into disarray. The weakening of connections causes the tip of the tongue problem
       • In perception, there is not such a big problem, as long as there is something there, even if you do not have the exact word you can still describe it e.g. its made from steel and it carries electricity

6. EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE: TIP OF THE TONGUE

   • Temporary retrieval failure. The feeling of knowing the word
     • IDH
       • Activation failure in semantic system - Unwanted activation of competitors
     • TDH
       • Activation failure in phonology. Weakened single connections used in lexical->phonological activation

7. RASTLE & BURKE (1996)

   • Investigated the locus of the TOT through prior processing of semantic and phonologically related items
     • Experiment 1
       • Pronunciation Task -> General knowledge questions
         • Pronunciation of answers in an seemingly unrelated prior task increased correct answers on general knowledge test and also reduced TOT state by 50 % across all ages.
     • Experiment 2
       • In Experiments 2 and 3, semantic prior processing increased correct responses to the questions, but did not reduce TOTs more than phonological processing.
         • Results support the Transmission Deficit model in which weakened connections between lexical and phonological nodes cause TOTs.

8. JAMES & BURKE (2000)

   • PPs read aloud prime words that sometimes shared phonological components with a target word that answered a general knowledge question. Compares TOT in young and older adults.
     • Found no differences in word recall but found that priming reduces TOT and increases word recall

9. WHITE & ABRAMS (2002)

   • Investigate whether the priming of either the first, second, or final syllables of words helps to increase TOT resolution
     • Priming the 1st syllable is by far the most useful , reduced TOT the most
       • However, this did not help the older PPs, which suggests that these connections have become so weak that recent activation gives no help. Need more than just a syllable

10. WHITE & ABRAMS (2004)

    • Looked at the advantages of priming semantic nodes rather than phonological. Associative word stem completion either phonological or semantic
      • Found that semantic priming was much more effective and was better in older adults than younger BUT there was no difference in phonological priming effects across age groups
        • TDH: the connections are susceptible to time bc they are reliant on single connections – failures of these single connections mean result in TOT state The advantages of semantics – there are different concepts, the interconnectedness is so huge so can take another route there. Older adults have easier time

11. PROPER NAMES

    • Majority of TOT occur with proper names
      • Lots of interconnectedness of associations around the concept of that person e.g. they are a swimmer, brunette etc. There is a rich body of info. Names = a single connection
        • Fewer semantic connections Low activation frequency
    • BURKE ET AL (2004)
      • investigated why proper names are difficult to retrieve and looked at whether homophone primes can reduce TOT in older populations
        • Prior production of a homophone (e.g., pit) as the response on a definition trial increased correct naming and reduced TOT experiences for a proper name (e.g., Pitt) on a picture naming trial.
          • Representations of proper names are susceptible to weak connections that cause deficits in the transmission of excitation, impairing retrieval especially in older adults. We conclude that homophone production strengthens phonological connections, increasing the transmission of excitation.
            • contradicts IDH
    • JAMES (2004)
      • Investigate theoretical deficits in learning and recall of proper names . young and older participants saw faces of previously unknown people identified by name and occupation. On subsequent presentations of each picture, participants attempted to recall the pictured person's name and occupation. Results showed specific age-related deficit in proper-name learning.

12. (Charlot & Feyereisen, 2004)

    • Establish whether age related priming differences found in sentence completion tasks are explained by deficits in explicit memory or inhibition
      • Inhibit word and use a different word or use the same word to complete the sentence