Understanding the aging lexicon by linking individuals' experience, semantic networks, and cognitive performance

Abstract

People undergo many idiosyncratic experiences throughout their lives that may contribute to individual differences in the size and structure of their knowledge representations. Ultimately, these can have important implications for individuals' cognitive performance. We review evidence that suggests a relationship between individual experiences, the size and structure of semantic representations, as well as individual and age differences in cognitive performance. We conclude that the extent to which experience-dependent changes in semantic representations contribute to individual differences in cognitive aging remains unclear. To help fill this gap, we outline an empirical agenda involving the concurrent assessment of large-scale semantic networks and cognitive performance in younger and older adults, and present preliminary data to establish the feasibility and limitations of such empirical approaches.

Beauty and Wellness in the Semantic Memory of the Beholder

“…Thus, a similar analysis as conducted in our study at the individual level would be helpful. While currently still a challenge, a few methods have been proposed to estimate individual-based semantic networks ( Morais et al, 2013 ; Zemla et al, 2016 ; Benedek et al, 2017 ; He et al, 2020 ; Wulff et al, 2021 ). Thus, follow up research is needed to estimate individual-based semantic networks related to the concepts of beauty and wellness, to replicate and extend our current findings.…”

Methodological Considerations for Incorporating Clinical Data Into a Network Model of Retrieval Failures

“…Another approach to estimate individual semantic networks uses a relatedness judgment task, where individuals indicate how similar two randomly selected words are to one another (Benedek, Kenett, Anaki, & Faust, 2017; Bernard, Kenett, Ovando‐Tellez, & Benedek, 2019; He et al., 2020). A third approach to estimate individual semantic networks uses a free association task with a snowball sampling procedure, where individuals provide related words to presented cue words and new cue words are generated from the individual's own responses (Morais, Olsson, & Schooler, 2013; Wulff et al., 2021). All of these approaches attempt to capture the structure of a person's semantic network by considering how the person searches their network.…”

The "Small World of Words" Free Association Norms for Rioplatense Spanish

“…Another exciting possibility opened by these norms is to use them as a standard against which individual associations can be compared. Individual comparisons have applications in probing cognitive deficits and decline (Gollan et al, 2006;Wulff et al, 2021), assessing students' vocabulary learning (Fitzpatrick & Thwaites, 2020;Meara, 1980), and in studies of development across the lifespan more broadly. This will require the creation of appropriate sampling methods to Álvaro Cabana: acabana@psico.edu.uy collect individual data and expand the norms to deal with different domains, populations, and dialects.…”