Language, Memory, and Aging

From a cognitive standpoint, the authors consider the role of awareness in memory and language.

Leah L. Light (Edited by), Deborah M. Burke (Edited by)

9780521329422, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 November 1988

294 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.58 kg

'In an unusually successful effort, Light and Burke provide a cohesive treatment of the themes and issues of research on language, memory, and aging, not just the chapters in their book … A unique feature of this book is that it contains two chapters, one by Emery and the other by Huff, that explore the parallel between normal age-related changes and those due to disease, such as Alzheimer's. It is important to integrate this area of research further in normal cognitive aging and cognitive psychology.' Contemporary Psychology

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Psychiatry [MMH]