Language Comprehension in Aging and AD

老龄化和 AD 中的语言理解

• 批准号: 6796133
• 负责人: Gloria S Waters
• 金额: $ 32.6万
• 依托单位: BOSTON UNIVERSITY (CHARLES RIVER CAMPUS)
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1997
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1997-05-01 至 2007-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6796133
• 关键词: Alzheimer' s disease; aging; behavioral /social science research tag; clinical research; comprehension; human middle age (35-64); human old age (65+); human subject; language; neural information processing; performance; positron emission tomography; short term memory; vocabulary; young adult human (21-34)

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Regardless of whether language is written or spoken, the input to the comprehender becomes available over time and temporally discontinuous parts of the input must be related to one another for language to be understood. Thus, language comprehension must involve a temporary store or working memory system. Some decrements in language comprehension have been hypothesized to be related to decrements in working memory capacity. Working memory capacity declines with age and this decline has in turn been related to reductions in other cognitive capacities, in particular the speed with which cognitive operations can be carried out. While WM, processing speed and language comprehension are certainly related in some way, the exact nature of the connections between them is not fully understood. A basic question is the extent to which changes in language processing, WM and speed of processing are unitary vs. the extent to which they can dissociate. Some aspects of language comprehension are greatly over practiced and may not be affected by WM limitations or processing speed reductions that appear in other verbal tasks. The proposed research will investigate the relationship between language comprehension, WM and speed of processing by characterizing and relating language comprehension (at the levels of sentences and discourse), WM and processing speed in elderly participants and AD patients. The research will mainly use behavioral approaches, but will also employ functional neuroimaging to provide a different source of data regarding these relationships.

描述（由申请人提供）：无论语言是书面还是说话，对理解者的输入随着时间的流逝而可用，并且输入的时间不连续的部分都必须彼此相关，才能理解语言。因此，语言理解必须涉及临时存储或工作记忆系统。已经认为，语言理解的一些降低与工作记忆能力的降低有关。随着年龄的增长，工作记忆能力下降，而这种下降又与其他认知能力的降低有关，尤其是可以进行认知操作的速度。尽管WM，处理速度和语言理解肯定在某种程度上是相关的，但它们之间的联系的确切性质尚未完全理解。一个基本的问题是语言处理，WM和处理速度的变化在多大程度上是统一的，而不是它们可以分离的程度。语言理解的某些方面极大地实践，并且可能不会受到其他口头任务中出现的WM限制或降低的处理速度的影响。拟议的研究将通过表征和关联语言理解（在句子和话语的水平），老年参与者和AD患者的语言理解（在句子和话语的层面上），WM和处理速度来调查语言理解，WM和处理速度之间的关系。该研究将主要使用行为方法，但还将采用功能性神经影像来提供有关这些关系的不同数据来源。