The presence of hypertension and diabetes adversely affected sentence comprehension, but the relative contribution of each was different. These findings support the researchers' earlier speculations on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the effects of hypertension and diabetes on language and cognition in aging. Uncontrolled disease status demonstrated more complicated age-related effects on sentence processing, highlighting the clinical importance for cognitive aging of identifying and managing vascular risk factors.
This is a proof-of-concept case study designed to evaluate the presence of "Linguistic Anxiety" in a person with mild aphasia. The participant (aged 68) was tested on linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive tasks administered under conditions that differed in levels of anxiety. A validated anxiety-induction technique rarely used in previous aphasia studies was employed: the participant was instructed to prepare for a public speaking presentation. Measures of linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive performance, and anxiety (self-report and psychophysiologic) were obtained. The participant exhibited increased psychophysiologic stress reactivity (heart rate, skin conductance and self-report ratings) in the high-anxiety condition. In the state of increased anxiety, performance on language tasks, in particular discourse production, declined relative to performance in low-anxiety settings. Even in mild aphasia, language-based anxiety can interfere with language performance. This finding provides a basis for carrying out a study with a larger sample that can open a new path to assessment and treatment of persons with aphasia.
This study examined the effects of executive control and working memory on older adults' sentence-final word recognition. The question we addressed was the importance of executive functions to this process and how it is modulated by the predictability of the speech material. To this end, we tested 173 neurologically intact adult native English speakers aged 55-84 years. Participants were given a sentence-final word recognition test in which sentential context was manipulated and sentences were presented in different levels of babble, and multiple tests of executive functioning assessing inhibition, shifting, and efficient access to long-term memory, as well as working memory. Using a generalized linear mixed model, we found that better inhibition was associated with higher accuracy in word recognition, while increased age and greater hearing loss were associated with poorer performance. Findings are discussed in the framework of semantic control and are interpreted as supporting a theoretical view of executive control which emphasizes functional diversity among executive components.
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