Full Description
There has been an upsurge of interest in the aging process as it affects cognition. Most research attention has been focused on memory and relatively little has been focused on language in the elderly. This volume addresses both the research on language in old age relevant to memory, and memory research relevant to language in old age. The authors draw on a range of methodologies and compare young and older adults (both normal and demented). Representing the major perspectives in contemporary cognition theory, they raise such current issues as the role of awareness in memory and language, the relation between semantic and episodic memory, the distinction between automatic and attentional processes, and the usefulness of distinguishing among levels of processing. The book will be welcomed not only as an invaluable overview for cognitive and developmental psychologists, neuropsychologists and psycholinguists but also as a supplementary text for graduate students in cognitive science and gerontology.
Contents
Preface; 1. Theories of information processing and theories of aging; 2. Effects of aging on verbal abilities: examination of the psychometric literature; 3. Aging and individual differences in memory for written discourse; 4. Geriatric psycholinguistics: syntactic limitations of oral and written language; 5. Aging and memory activation: the priming of semantic and episodic memories; 6. Automatic and effortful semantic processes in old age: experimental and naturalistic approaches; 7. Integrating information from discourse: do older adults show deficits?; 8. Comprehension of pragmatic implications in young and older adults; 9. Capacity theory and the processing of inferences; 10. Age differences in memory for texts: production deficiency or processing liminations?; 11. Episodic memory and knowledge interactions across adulthood; 12. The disorder of naming in Alzheimer's disease; 13. Language and memory processing in semile dementia Alzheimer's type; 14. Patterns of language and memory in old age; Author index; Subject index.
