Psychology

Human cognitive neuroscience seminar

Speaker: Abby Cosgrove (Center for Language Science, Pennsylvania State University)

Title: How Aging Shapes Semantic Memory: Exploring the Relationships between Language Abilities, Network Construction, and Word Characteristics on the Structure of Semantic Networks in Younger and Older Adults

Abstract: Healthy aging is associated with declines across a variety of cognitive domains, including memory, processing speed, executive functioning, and language production ability (Burke & Shafto, 2008; Salthouse, 2010). Life experiences and conceptual knowledge, however, tend to increase with age (Park et al., 2002). Individuals continuously acquire and retain new words, concepts, and ideas that require representation in the semantic system. Computationally modeled networks allow us to analyze the interactions between a large sample of semantic information (Siew et al., 2019). Previous work focused on semantic networks and aging have found that with increased age, semantic memory becomes less efficient, less organized, and sparsely connected (Cosgrove et al., 2021; Wulff et al., 2019). Furthermore, vocabulary knowledge was significantly related to the semantic memory network measures, corresponding with the age effects, which may reflect the critical role that the accumulation of knowledge has on semantic memory structure (Cosgrove et al., 2023). To date, most studies on semantic networks have focused on concrete items (Kenett et al., 2021). However, both abstract and concrete concepts make up one’s mental lexicon and therefore contribute to the semantic network. Research showed that abstract words generally require more effortful retrieval from semantic memory (Crutch et al., 2009; Paivio, 1991), yet older adults have been shown to have a heavier reliance on semantic knowledge and context when completing semantic selection tasks (Hoffman, 2018). Finding evidence of a relationship between abstract and concrete words in semantic memory could shed new light on the successful processing and retrieval for a broader set of words in the aging lexicon.

Contact

The seminars are organised by the Human Cognitive Neuroscience research group. For further information, or if you would like to join the e-mail list for these seminars, please email Ed Silson.

Ed Silson

Human cognitive neuroscience

Mar 08 2023 -

Human cognitive neuroscience seminar

2023-03-08: How Aging Shapes Semantic Memory: Exploring the Relationships between Language Abilities, Network Construction, and Word Characteristics on the Structure of Semantic Networks in Younger and Older Adults

Room 3.10/3.11, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD