The mental lexicon through the lifespan: word retrieval, healthy ageing, and dementia

This seminar reports on a project investigating the way we store and access words, and how this changes the lifespan. The project objectives include:

• to identify patterns of lexical retrieval in healthy ageing
• to identify those aspects of the lexicon most vulnerable to dementia effects

Word association data are used to detect connections in the mental lexicon, and to examine word retrieval patterns. It is demonstrated how judicious analysis of data from cohorts differentiated by age (young and older adults) and by cognitive impairment (dementia) can reveal which aspects of the lexicon are robust, or vulnerable, to these factors.

There will be discussion on how examining the mental lexicon in this way has potential to facilitate breakthroughs in understanding the impact on communicative effectiveness of healthy ageing and of dementia, and to inform communication strategies for specific conditions and contexts.

This conference is being run by Centre for Ageing and Dementia Research if you have any questions, please contact the event team.