Objectives
Language markers derived from structured clinical interviews and assessments have been found to predict age-related normal and pathological cognitive functioning. An important question, then, is the degree to which the language that people use in their natural daily interactions, rather than their language elicited within and specifically for clinical assessment, carries information about key cognitive functions associated with age-related decline. In an observational study, we investigated how variability in executive functioning (EF) manifests in patterns of daily word use.
Method
Cognitively normal older adults (n = 102; mean age 76 years) wore the electronically activated recorder, an ambulatory monitoring device that intermittently recorded short snippets of ambient sounds, for 4 days, yielding an acoustic log of their daily conversations as they naturally unfolded. Verbatim transcripts of their captured utterances were text-analyzed using linguistic inquiring and word count. EF was assessed with a validated test battery measuring WM, shifting, and inhibitory control.
Results
Controlling for age, education, and gender, higher overall EF, and particularly working memory, was associated with analytic (e.g., more articles and prepositions), complex (e.g., more longer words), and specific (e.g., more numbers) language in addition to other language markers (e.g., a relatively less positive emotional tone, more sexual and swear words).
Discussion
This study provides first evidence that the words older adults use in daily life provide a window into their EF.
The retrieval of autobiographical memories is an integral part of everyday social interactions. Prior laboratory research has revealed that older age is associated with a reduction in the retrieval of autobiographical episodic memories, and the ability to elaborate these memories with episodic details. However, how age-related reductions in episodic specificity unfold in everyday social contexts remains largely unknown. Also, constraints of the laboratory-based approach have limited our understanding of how autobiographical semantic memory is linked to older age. To address these gaps in knowledge, we used a smartphone application known as the Electronically Activated Recorder, or "EAR," to unobtrusively capture real-world conversations over 4 days. In a sample of 102 cognitively normal older adults, we extracted instances where memories and future thoughts were shared by the participants, and we scored the shared episodic memories and future thoughts for their make-up of episodic and semantic detail. We found that older age was associated with a reduction in real-world sharing of autobiographical episodic and semantic memories. We also found that older age was linked to less episodically and semantically detailed descriptions of autobiographical episodic memories. Frequency and level of detail of shared future thoughts yielded weaker relationships with age, which may be related to the low frequency of future thoughts in general. Similar to laboratory research, there was no correlation between autobiographical episodic detail sharing and a standard episodic memory test. However, in contrast to laboratory studies, episodic detail production while sharing autobiographical episodic memories was weakly related to episodic detail
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