The Effect of Social Isolation on Lexical Retrieval in Elderly Adults

社会隔离对老年人词汇检索的影响

• 批准号: 10373558
• 负责人: Loraine K. Obler
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: CUNY GRADUATE SCH AND UNIV CTR
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-15 至 2022-09-16
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10373558
• 关键词: Address; Adult; Affect; Aging; Alzheimer' s Disease; Aphasia; Buffers; COVID-19; Cognition; Cognitive; Cognitive aging; Communication; Dementia; Distress; Elderly; Evaluation; Family; Frequencies; Friends; Frustration; Future; Goals; Health; Impairment; Interruption; Investigation; Language; Lead; Linguistics; Longevity; Measures; Mental Depression; Mind; Modification; Names; Neurodegenerative Disorders; North America; Outcome; Participant; Patient Self-Report; Perception; Performance; Persons; Play; Population; Positioning Attribute; Primary Progressive Aphasia; Production; Public Health; Quality of life; Questionnaires; Radio; Reporting; Research; Retrieval; Retrospective Studies; Retrospective cohort; Risk; Role; SARS-CoV-2 transmission; Social Distance; Social Identification; Social Interaction; Social Network; Social isolation; Specific qualifier value; Stimulus; Testing; Time; Withdrawal; Work; age related; base; clinically significant; cognitive performance; cognitive process; cohort; executive function; experience; experimental study; follow-up; healthy aging; improved; lexical retrieval; member; mild cognitive impairment; nervous system disorder; novel; social; social communication; social contact; social engagement; social interventions; social situation; therapeutic target; tongue apex; volunteer

Project Summary/Abstract Coming up with the word we want to say (lexical retrieval) is a worrying concern among older adults. Those with dementia, naturally, experience difficulty on lexical-retrieval tasks, but typical older adults do as well. They may struggle with people’s names, but also with words for objects. Moreover, while the problems arise primarily for low-frequency words, they sometimes arise even when the word is quite familiar. Such problems with lexical retrieval appear to be compounded by the lack of speaking opportunities resulting from the social isolation that often accompanies aging in 21st century North America, and, we propose, particularly so by the extremes which have accompanied COVID-19 for many in 2020. In this project, we use a refined task to induce tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experiences and predict that performance on that task will correlate with the degree of social isolation which our participants have endured. Moreover, increases in such communication lapses can lead to frustration, breakdowns in conversation, and, paradoxically, a desire to withdraw from social interactions in order to avoid the perception of communicative incompetence. Although substantial advances have been made in our understanding of social isolation and its influence on cognition in aging, the scope of what can be determined from measures of cognitive performance alone is limited. Most crucially, we do not yet know the effects of reduction in communication due to social isolation on word retrieval. In Study 1, we propose to retest the 53 healthy participants tested for a different project in the period leading up to COVID-19 on TOT stimuli, using items they did not see in the earlier test. A self-report of changes in social contact and communicative exchanges due to COVID-19 will allow us to gauge whether a change in social connection impacts word-finding ability. We hypothesize that poorer word-finding at the second testing will correlate positively with the degree of social isolation and negatively with the extent of social communication. In Study 2 we will conduct a larger, retrospective study of social isolation and opportunities for communicative exchanges on word-finding difficulties. We will utilize the measures from Study 1 and extend them to a broader, representative cohort of healthy older adults. We hypothesize that participants involved in social activities that require expressive language will perform better on our lexical retrieval measure, and that opportunities for communicative exchange will be negatively correlated with social isolation levels. Our findings will have a significant impact on public health because they will provide measures of how social isolation can affect communication and, for future efforts, make it possible to improve the language abilities of both healthy seniors and those with dementia.

项目摘要/摘要 提出我们想说的（词汇检索）的词是老年人令人担忧的问题。那些与 痴呆自然会在词汇 - 恢复任务上遇到困难，但典型的老年人也这样做。他们可能 在人们的名字中挣扎，也要用词语来供物体。而且，尽管问题出现了 低频单词，即使单词非常熟悉，它们有时也会出现。词汇 检索似乎是由于缺乏由社会隔离所带来的说话机会而加剧了 通常参与21世纪北美的衰老，我们建议，特别是通过极端 在2020年的许多人都陪伴了Covid-19。 （TOT）体验并预测该任务的绩效将与社会隔离程度相关 我们的参与者忍受了。此外，这种交流失误的增加可能导致挫败感， 对话中的崩溃，并且矛盾地渴望退出社交互动以避免 沟通无能的感知。尽管在我们的 了解社会隔离及其对衰老认知的影响，可以确定的范围 仅靠认知表现的测量是有限的。最关键的是，我们还不知道 由于单词检索而导致的社会隔离导致的沟通减少。在研究1中，我们建议重新测试53 健康参与者在使用TOT刺激的过程中对其他项目进行了针对另一个项目的测试，并使用 他们在较早的测试中没有看到的项目。社会接触变化和交流交流的自我报告 由于COVID-19，将使我们能够衡量社会联系的变化是否会影响调查能力。我们 假设在第二次测试中较差的单词调查将与社会程度呈正相关 隔离和负面的社会交流程度。在研究2中，我们将进行更大的 回顾性研究社会隔离和有关沟通困难的交流机会的机会。 我们将利用研究1的措施并将其扩展到更广泛的措施，代表健康的老年人 成年人。我们 假设参与需要表达语言的社交活动的参与者将执行 在我们的词汇检索测量中更好，交流交流的机会将是负面的 与社会隔离水平相关。我们的发现将对公共卫生产生重大影响，因为他们 将提供衡量社会隔离如何影响沟通的衡量，并为将来的努力做出努力 提高健康老年人和痴呆症患者的语言能力。