Memory for Melodies and Lyrics in Alzheimer's Disease

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 479-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lola L. Cuddy ◽  
Jacalyn M. Duffin ◽  
Sudeep S. Gill ◽  
Cassandra L. Brown ◽  
Ritu Sikka ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Semantic Memory ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Alzheimer Type ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Contrast Detection ◽  
Severe Stage ◽  
Musical Memory

this research addressed the question: is musical memory preserved in dementia, specifically, dementia of the Alzheimer type (AD)? Six tests involving different aspects of melody and language processing were administered to each of five groups of participants: 50 younger adults, 100 older adults, and 50 AD older adults classified into three levels of AD severity—mild, moderate and severe. No test was immune to, but not all tests were equally sensitive to, the presence of dementia. Long-term familiarity for melody was preserved across levels of AD, even at the severe stage for a few individuals. Detecting pitch distortions in melodies was possible for mild and some of the moderate AD participants. The ability to sing a melody when prompted by its lyrics was retained at the mild stage and was retained by a few individuals through the severe stages of AD. Long-term familiarity with the lyrics of familiar melodies was also found across levels of AD. In contrast, detection of grammatical distortions in the lyrics of familiar melodies and the ability to complete familiar proverbs were affected even at the mild stage of AD. We conclude that musical semantic memory may be spared through the mild and moderate stages of AD and may be preserved even in some individuals at the severe stage.

Episodic and Semantic Memory for Melodies in Alzheimer's Disease

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 501-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley D. Vanstone ◽  
Ritu Sikka ◽  
Leila Tangness ◽  
Rosalind Sham ◽  
Angeles Garcia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Semantic Memory ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Novel Target ◽  
Musical Memory

the present study addressed episodic and semantic memory for melodies in three groups of participants: 35 younger adults, 40 older adults, and 10 individuals with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD). To assess episodic memory, a study list of eight novel target melodies was presented three times, followed by a test trial in which target melodies were mixed with foil (previously unheard) melodies. Both explicit and implicit measures were obtained. Explicit memory was assessed by the accuracy of discrimination of the target melodies from the foils. Younger adults were significantly more accurate than older adults, who in turn had significantly higher scores than AD adults. Implicit memory was assessed by examining the difference in pleasantness ratings between target and foil melodies. Younger adults showed significantly greater differences in pleasantness ratings than older adults and AD adults; scores for the two latter groups did not differ. To assess semantic memory, participants were asked to identify traditional melodies within a series of traditional and novel melodies. In contrast to the episodic memory results, all three groups showed very high scores on the semantic memory task with no significant differences among groups. The results support the notion that, though other forms of musical memory may be compromised, semantic memory for melody may be preserved in normal aging and in AD.

scholarly journals Age differences in the precision of memory at short and long delays

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rhodes ◽  
Emily E Abenne ◽  
Ashley M Meierhofer ◽  
Moshe Naveh-Benjamin
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Recall Error ◽  
Successful Recall ◽  
Error Distance

Age differences are well established for many memory tasks assessing both short-term and long-term memory. However, how age differences in performance vary with increasing delay between study and test is less clear. Here we report two experiments in which participants studied a continuous sequence of object-location pairings. Test events were intermixed such that participants were asked to recall the precise location of an object following a variable delay. Older adults exhibit a greater degree of error (distance between studied and recalled locations) relative to younger adults at short (0-2 intervening events) and longer delays (10-25 intervening events). Mixture modeling of the distribution of recall error suggests that older adults do not fail to recall information at a significantly higher rate than younger adults. Instead, what they do recall appears to be less precise. Follow up analyses demonstrate that this age difference emerges following only one or two intervening events between study and test. These findings are consistent with the suggestion that aging does not greatly impair recall from the focus of attention but age differences emerge once information is displaced from this highly accessible state. Further, we suggest that age differences in the precision of memory, but not the probability of successful recall, may be due to the use of more gist-like representations in this task.

scholarly journals Situated Language Processing Across the Lifespan: A Review

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Münster ◽  
Pia Knoeferle
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Psycholinguistic Research ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Real Time Processing ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Vision And Language

In this review we focus on the close interplay between visual contextual information and real-time language processing. Crucially, we are showing that not only college-aged adults but also children and older adults can profit from visual contextual information for language comprehension. Yet, given age-related biological and experiential changes, children and older adults might not always be able to link visual and linguistic information in the same way and with the same time course as younger adults in real-time language processing. Psycholinguistic research on visually situated real-time language processing in children and even more so older adults is still scarce compared to research in this domain using college-aged participants. In order to gain more comprehensive insights into the interplay between vision and language during real-time processing, we are arguing for a lifespan approach to situated language processing.

scholarly journals Cognitive aging and verbal labeling in continuous visual memory

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (7) ◽  
pp. 1196-1213
Author(s):  
Alicia Forsberg ◽  
Wendy Johnson ◽  
Robert H. Logie
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Age Related

Abstract The decline of working memory (WM) is a common feature of general cognitive decline, and visual and verbal WM capacity appear to decline at different rates with age. Visual material may be remembered via verbal codes or visual traces, or both. Souza and Skóra, Cognition, 166, 277–297 (2017) found that labeling boosted memory in younger adults by activating categorical visual long-term memory (LTM) knowledge. Here, we replicated this and tested whether it held in healthy older adults. We compared performance in silence, under instructed overt labeling (participants were asked to say color names out loud), and articulatory suppression (repeating irrelevant syllables to prevent labeling) in the delayed estimation paradigm. Overt labeling improved memory performance in both age groups. However, comparing the effect of overt labeling and suppression on the number of coarse, categorical representations in the two age groups suggested that older adults used verbal labels subvocally more than younger adults, when performing the task in silence. Older adults also appeared to benefit from labels differently than younger adults. In younger adults labeling appeared to improve visual, continuous memory, suggesting that labels activated visual LTM representations. However, for older adults, labels did not appear to enhance visual, continuous representations, but instead boosted memory via additional verbal (categorical) memory traces. These results challenged the assumption that visual memory paradigms measure the same cognitive ability in younger and older adults, and highlighted the importance of controlling differences in age-related strategic preferences in visual memory tasks.

scholarly journals Word Processing Is Faster than Picture Processing in Alzheimer’s Disease

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Kenichi Meguro ◽  
Yumi Takahashi ◽  
Masahiro Nakatsuka ◽  
Jiro Oonuma ◽  
Keiichi Kumai ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Semantic Memory ◽  
Processing Speed ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Picture Processing ◽  
Course Of Disease ◽  
Severe Stage ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Nonsense Syllables

Objective. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by a slow progressive impairment of episodic memory. Many studies have shown that AD exhibits deterioration of semantic memory during the course of disease progression. We previously reported that AD patients exhibited severe access disorders in the semantic memory system, using the Momentary Presentation Task (20 or 300 ms). In this study, we studied access disorder in patients with AD by the use of object difference (pictures vs words) methods. Methods. 56 patients with probable AD (NINCDS-ADRDA, mean age 79.0 years) and 11 healthy controls (HC) (mean age 67.0 years) were studied. Ten pictures and 10 corresponding Japanese Hiragana words were presented arbitrarily for 20 and 300 ms on the monitor screen which were correctly named at the usual confrontation setting (i.e., semantic memory preserved). They were asked to name the pictures or to read the words or nonsense syllables aloud. Results. The AD group showed significantly lower scores than the HC group, especially for the 20 ms condition. For the type of stimuli, the AD patients had better performances for words > pictures > nonsense syllables, although no differences for the HC group. The effect of AD severity was noted, moderate > severe stage. Conclusions. Our results suggested that the processing speed in AD patients may have reduced, even if the semantic memory were preserved. These data indicated that the difference in the processing speeds by the type of stimuli (pictures, words, and nonsense syllables) may be a character of AD patients.

scholarly journals Associations of lower vitamin D concentrations with cognitive decline and long-term risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease in older adults

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 1207-1216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Feart ◽  
Catherine Helmer ◽  
Bénédicte Merle ◽  
François R. Herrmann ◽  
Cédric Annweiler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Vitamin D ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Lower Vitamin

scholarly journals Neuropsychological Test Performance and Cognitive Reserve in Healthy Aging and the Alzheimer's Disease Spectrum: A Theoretically Driven Factor Analysis

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 1071-1080 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan B. Mitchell ◽  
Lynn W. Shaughnessy ◽  
Steven D. Shirk ◽  
Frances M. Yang ◽  
Alireza Atri
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Cognitive Reserve ◽  
Cognitive Change ◽  
Control Group

AbstractAccurate measurement of cognitive function is critical for understanding the disease course of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Detecting cognitive change over time can be confounded by level of premorbid intellectual function or cognitive reserve and lead to under- or over-diagnosis of cognitive impairment and AD. Statistical models of cognitive performance that include cognitive reserve can improve sensitivity to change and clinical efficacy. We used confirmatory factor analysis to test a four-factor model composed of memory/language, processing speed/executive function, attention, and cognitive reserve factors in a group of cognitively healthy older adults and a group of participants along the spectrum of amnestic mild cognitive impairment to AD (aMCI-AD). The model showed excellent fit for the control group (χ2 = 100; df = 78; CFI = .962; RMSEA = .049) and adequate fit for the aMCI-AD group (χ2 = 1750; df = 78; CFI = .932; RMSEA = .085). Although strict invariance criteria were not met, invariance testing to determine if factor structures are similar across groups yielded acceptable absolute model fits and provide evidence in support of configural, metric, and scalar invariance. These results provide further support for the construct validity of cognitive reserve in healthy and memory impaired older adults. (JINS, 2012, 18, 1–10)

Visual Search Processes in Healthy Aging

Perception ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 4-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Tales ◽  
T Troscianko ◽  
S R Butler
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Parkinson’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Parkinson's Disease ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Size Task

It is well established that there are two limiting types of visual search, a pre-attentive parallel and an attention-related serial process. Such different types of processing may depend upon different regions of the visual cortex and such a measurable dissociation of function could provide a useful marker for particular types of cortical pathology, such as that associated with Parkinson's disease, aging, and Alzheimer's disease. For example, recent studies in this laboratory have shown that people with Parkinson's disease have abnormal parallel but normal serial search functions. Plude and Doussard-Roosevelt (1989 Psychology and Aging4 98 – 105) found no difference in parallel processing between older and young adults, but found that older adults performed worse on a conjunction task. The aim of the present experiment was to extend this research and look at the effect of aging on other types of visual search task and to compare these findings to patients with Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease to determine if different patterns of visual function occur. Twenty-five young adults (mean age 32.6 years) and twenty-five older adults (mean age 63.4 years) performed both a conjunction task and a task involving the detection of a target only slightly larger than the distractors (the ‘size’ task). Our hypothesis was that for both types of visual search there would be an increase in search slope in the older adult group compared to the younger adults. Results of a 2-factor (1 between and 1 within) ANOVA performed on the slope values indicate statistically significant main effects of both age ( F=7.661, p<0.008) and search task ( F=25.426, p<0.0001), where in both the conjunction and size task the slope value was significantly greater for the older than for the younger adults. The slope for the size task was significantly greater than that for the conjunction task for both age groups. The results therefore support our hypothesis and further work is in progress to determine the effects of Alzheimer's disease on different types of visual search processing.

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