Proverb interpretation changes in aging

What dementia reveals about proverb interpretation and its neuroanatomical correlates

“…Better performance on commonly known proverbs, as with our AD patients, could be due to familiarity with the proverbs or to well encoded abstract meanings. Proverb familiarity is an important moderator of proverb test performance (Nippold & Haq, 1996;Uekermann, Thoma, & Daum, 1998), and researchers have speculated that successful recognition of familiar nonliteral expressions involves the perception of an overall pattern (Gibbs, 1980;Horowitz & Manelis, 1973;Lieberman, 1963;Osgood & Housain, 1974). In contrast, comprehension of proverbs that are novel to the subject can require extensive semantic association processes and referring to general world knowledge.…”

Age in High-Functioning Healthy Men Is Associated with Nonlinear Decline in Some ‘Executive’ Functions in Late Middle Age

“…We found that PCET change was not explained by working memory, attention and processing speed impairments; however, given the broad scope of 'executive' and 'frontal' domains, further testing is needed to identify the precise cognitive functions impaired, including those tapped by the PCET decline. This may be particularly important in light of evidence that the age-related decline in executive functions can hamper routine daily life activities such as initiative or decision making [72][73][74][75] .…”

Adequate proverb interpretation is associated with performance on the Independent Living Scales

“…Proverbs are defined as abstract expressions that convey messages about society (Uekermann et al, 2008). Successful proverb interpretation requires the ability to understand the abstract meaning instead of its concrete statement and is therefore considered an executive function (Delis et al, 2001a).…”