[Selective disturbance in lexical knowledge in the elderly with or without dementia]

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Linguistics

Background:

• Word imagery influences word association, a phenomenon observed in younger adults.
• The relationship between word imagery, age of acquisition, and lexical retrieval is complex.
• Understanding these processes is crucial for identifying cognitive decline.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effect of word imagery on word association in elderly individuals with and without dementia.
• To explore the interaction between word imagery and age of acquisition in different age groups.
• To identify potential markers of lexical knowledge disturbance and cognitive impairment.

Main Methods:

• Assembling Dutch word association norms for younger subjects.
• Comparing word association responses (commonality, blanks) based on word imagery.
• Analyzing the interaction between imagery and age of acquisition across age groups and dementia status.

Main Results:

• High imagery words elicited more common responses and fewer blanks than low imagery words in all groups.
• Younger adults showed an interaction: imagery effects were prominent only for late-acquired words.
• Elderly individuals (with/without dementia) lacked this interaction, indicating disturbed lexical knowledge related to word acquisition age.

Conclusions:

• Lexical knowledge in elderly, especially those with dementia, is compromised, particularly for words acquired later in life.
• Difficulties in retrieving words based on property relationships (e.g., 'desert-sand') suggest impaired conceptual knowledge.
• Increased multiword responses in dementia point to a loss of lexical retrieval strategies, warranting further investigation.